Kin Keung Lai

This book provides an updated, concise summary of forecasting air travel demand methodology. It looks at air travel demand forecasting research and attempts to outline the whole intellectual landscape of demand forecasting. It helps readers to understand the basic idea of TEI@I methodology used in forecasting air travel demand and how it is used in developing air travel demand forecasting methods. The book also discusses what to do when facing different forecasting problems making it a useful reference for business practitioners in the industry.

This book explores and analyzes influential predictors and the underlying mechanisms of individual content sharing/retweeting behavior on social networking sites (SNS) from an empirical perspective. Since Individual content sharing/ retweeting behavior expedites information dissemination, it is a critical mechanism of information diffusion on Twitter. Individual sharing/retweeting behavior does not appear to happen randomly. So, what factors lead to individual information dissemination behavior? What are the dominating predictors? How does the recipient make retweeting decisions? How do these influential predictors combine and by what mechanism do they influence an individual’s retweeting decisions? Furthermore, are there any differences in the process of individual retweeting decisions? If so, what causes such differences? In order to answer these previously unexplored questions and gain a holistic view of individual retweeting behavior, the authors examined people’s retweeting history on Twitter and obtained a real dataset containing more than 60 million Twitter posts. They then employed text mining and natural language processing techniques to extract useful information from social media content, and used various feature selection methods to identify a subset of salient features that have substantial effects on individual retweeting behavior. Lastly, they applied the Elaboration Likelihood Model to build an overarching theoretical framework to reveal the underlying mechanisms of individual retweeting behavior. Given its scope, this book will appeal to researchers interested in investigating information dissemination on social media, as well as to marketers and administrators who plan to use social networking sites as an important avenue for information dissemination.

This book provides an overview of Chinese RMB exchange markets and its risk management strategies. The view that RMB is playing an increasingly international role has been widely accepted by practitioners as well as scholars worldwide. Moreover, the Chinese government is opening the control of RMB exchange market step by step. However, some related topics are under heated debate, such as how to manage and warn of the currency crisis, what the trend of RMB exchange rate in the future is, and how to hedge the exchange risk in the process of RMB internationalization. In this book, we will give distinct answers to the above questions.

The book examines a relatively unexplored issue in supply chain risk management, which is how long companies specifically take to respond to catastrophic events of low probability but high impact. The book also looks at why such supply chain disruptions are unavoidable, and consequently, all complex supply chains are inherently at risk. The book illustrates how companies can respond to supply chain disruptions with faster responses and in shorter lead-times to reduce impact. In reducing total response time, designing solutions, and deploying a recovery plan sooner after a disruption in anticipation of such events, companies reduce the impact of disruption risk. The book also explores the basics of multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) and analytic hierarchy process (AHP), and how they contribute to both the quality of the financial economic decision-making process and the quality of the resulting decisions. The book illustrates through cases in the construction sector how this industry has become more complex and riskier due to the diverse nature of activities among global companies.

This book provides an overview of the operation of container terminals and the associated risks with such operations. These risks are often ignored or not properly investigated by both scholars and practitioners. Operational Risk Management in Container Terminals explores and discusses the decision rationales and the consequences for these operational risks handling process, with in-depth investigation on the container terminals in the Asia-Pacific region. The topics covered include the history and development of the container terminals, the operation of the terminals and risk incurred, the risk-management theories and concepts, rationales and consequences of the risk decisions in the container terminal operations, common practices and recommendations on terminal operational risk handling.

The book introduces how we can manage currency options with the Vanna-Volga method. It describes the underlying theories and applications of the Vanna-Volga method in managing currency options of a financial institution, conforming to the Basel III regulatory requirements which demand a high consistency between the valuation and market risk calculation methodologies of financial instruments. The book illustrates with technical details to shed understanding on the major applications, including valuation, volatility recovery, dynamic portfolio replication and value-at-risk. Those who study finance, risk management, quantitative finance or similar areas, as well as practitioners who wish to learn how to valuate, hedge and manage the market risk of currency options with more advanced models and techniques will find the book of invaluable use.

Apparel is one of the oldest and largest export industries in the world. It is also one of the most global industries because most nations produce for the international textile and apparel market. The changing global landscape drives cost volatility, regulatory risk and change in consumer preference. In today’s retail landscape, media and advocacy groups have focussed attention on social and environmental issues, as well as new regulatory requirements and stricter legislations. Understanding and managing any risk within the supply chain, particularly ethical and responsible sourcing, has become increasingly critical. This book first gives a systematic introduction to the evolution of SCRM through literature review and discusses the importance of SCRM in the apparel industry. Second, it describes the life cycle of the apparel supply chain and defines the different roles of the value chain in the apparel industry. Thirdly, it identifies the risk factors in the Apparel Life Cycle and analyses the risk sources and consequences and finally, extends the importance of selection of the suppliers and develops a supplier selection model and SCRM strategies solution by data analysis and case studies.

This book is developed for teaching a one semester course in credit risk management at postgraduate and advanced undergraduate levels as the first university course in financial risk management. Readers are assumed no prior knowledge in financial risk management. This revolutionary approach aims to broaden the lectures on credit risk management to the majority of students who intend to work in the financial industry. Recognizing that credit risk is the largest risk exposure in financial institutions, this book also seeks to answer the questions that are often raised by practitioners who actually work in the field of credit risk management. Riding on the Basel III framework, the solutions are delivered by contemporary techniques conforming to the latest regulatory standards. This fills immediately the gap between the working requirements in the office and the academic knowledge in the laboratory. Simply speaking, this book answers specifically the common questions of "how to" in the field of credit risk management. The presentation slides accompanying this book are available on the book website: https: //sites.google.com/site/crmbasel

This book provides an updated, concise summary of forecasting air travel demand methodology. It looks at air travel demand forecasting research and attempts to outline the whole intellectual landscape of demand forecasting. It helps readers to understand the basic idea of TEI@I methodology used in forecasting air travel demand and how it is used in developing air travel demand forecasting methods. The book also discusses what to do when facing different forecasting problems making it a useful reference for business practitioners in the industry.

This book provides different financial models based on options to predict underlying asset price and design the risk hedging strategies. Authors of the book have made theoretical innovation to these models to enable the models to be applicable to real market. The book also introduces risk management and hedging strategies based on different criterions. These strategies provide practical guide for real option trading. This book studies the classical stochastic volatility and deterministic volatility models. For the former, the classical Heston model is integrated with volatility term structure. The correlation of Heston model is considered to be variable. For the latter, the local volatility model is improved from experience of financial practice. The improved local volatility surface is then used for price forecasting. VaR and CVaR are employed as standard criterions for risk management. The options trading strategies are also designed combining different types of options and they have been proven to be profitable in real market. This book is a combination of theory and practice. Users will find the applications of these financial models in real market to be effective and efficient.

This book provides an overview of Chinese RMB exchange markets and its risk management strategies. The view that RMB is playing an increasingly international role has been widely accepted by practitioners as well as scholars worldwide. Moreover, the Chinese government is opening the control of RMB exchange market step by step. However, some related topics are under heated debate, such as how to manage and warn of the currency crisis, what the trend of RMB exchange rate in the future is, and how to hedge the exchange risk in the process of RMB internationalization. In this book, we will give distinct answers to the above questions.

Exotic options and structured products are two of the most popular financial products over the past ten years and will soon become very important to the emerging markets, especially China. This book first discusses the products' recent development in the world and provides comprehensive overview of the major products. The book also discusses the risks of issuing and buying such products as well as the techniques to price them and to assess the risks. Volatility is the most important factor in determining the return and risk. Therefore, significant part of the book's content discusses how we can measure the volatility by using local and stochastic volatility models — Heston Model and Dupire Model, the volatility surface, the term structure of volatility, variance swaps, and breakeven volatility. The book introduces a set of dimensions which can be used to describe structured products to help readers to classify them. It also describes the more commonly traded exotic options with details. The book discusses key features of each exotic option which can be used to develop structured products and covers their pricing models and when to issue such products that contain such exotic options. This book contains several case studies about how to use the models or techniques to price and hedge risks. These case analyses are illuminating.

The book introduces how we can manage currency options with the Vanna-Volga method. It describes the underlying theories and applications of the Vanna-Volga method in managing currency options of a financial institution, conforming to the Basel III regulatory requirements which demand a high consistency between the valuation and market risk calculation methodologies of financial instruments. The book illustrates with technical details to shed understanding on the major applications, including valuation, volatility recovery, dynamic portfolio replication and value-at-risk. Those who study finance, risk management, quantitative finance or similar areas, as well as practitioners who wish to learn how to valuate, hedge and manage the market risk of currency options with more advanced models and techniques will find the book of invaluable use.

This book provides an overview of the operation of container terminals and the associated risks with such operations. These risks are often ignored or not properly investigated by both scholars and practitioners. Operational Risk Management in Container Terminals explores and discusses the decision rationales and the consequences for these operational risks handling process, with in-depth investigation on the container terminals in the Asia-Pacific region. The topics covered include the history and development of the container terminals, the operation of the terminals and risk incurred, the risk-management theories and concepts, rationales and consequences of the risk decisions in the container terminal operations, common practices and recommendations on terminal operational risk handling.

Exotic options and structured products are two of the most popular financial products over the past ten years and will soon become very important to the emerging markets, especially China. This book first discusses the products' recent development in the world and provides comprehensive overview of the major products. The book also discusses the risks of issuing and buying such products as well as the techniques to price them and to assess the risks. Volatility is the most important factor in determining the return and risk. Therefore, significant part of the book's content discusses how we can measure the volatility by using local and stochastic volatility models — Heston Model and Dupire Model, the volatility surface, the term structure of volatility, variance swaps, and breakeven volatility. The book introduces a set of dimensions which can be used to describe structured products to help readers to classify them. It also describes the more commonly traded exotic options with details. The book discusses key features of each exotic option which can be used to develop structured products and covers their pricing models and when to issue such products that contain such exotic options. This book contains several case studies about how to use the models or techniques to price and hedge risks. These case analyses are illuminating.

This book provides different financial models based on options to predict underlying asset price and design the risk hedging strategies. Authors of the book have made theoretical innovation to these models to enable the models to be applicable to real market. The book also introduces risk management and hedging strategies based on different criterions. These strategies provide practical guide for real option trading. This book studies the classical stochastic volatility and deterministic volatility models. For the former, the classical Heston model is integrated with volatility term structure. The correlation of Heston model is considered to be variable. For the latter, the local volatility model is improved from experience of financial practice. The improved local volatility surface is then used for price forecasting. VaR and CVaR are employed as standard criterions for risk management. The options trading strategies are also designed combining different types of options and they have been proven to be profitable in real market. This book is a combination of theory and practice. Users will find the applications of these financial models in real market to be effective and efficient.

The foreign exchange market is one of the most complex dynamic markets with the characteristics of high volatility, nonlinearity and irregularity. Since the Bretton Woods System collapsed in 1970s, the fluctuations in the foreign exchange market are more volatile than ever. Furthermore, some important factors, such as economic growth, trade development, interest rates and inflation rates, have significant impacts on the exchange rate fluctuation. Meantime, these characteristics also make it extremely difficult to predict foreign exchange rates. Therefore, exchange rates forecasting has become a very important and challenge research issue for both academic and ind- trial communities. In this monograph, the authors try to apply artificial neural networks (ANNs) to exchange rates forecasting. Selection of the ANN approach for - change rates forecasting is because of ANNs’ unique features and powerful pattern recognition capability. Unlike most of the traditional model-based forecasting techniques, ANNs are a class of data-driven, self-adaptive, and nonlinear methods that do not require specific assumptions on the und- lying data generating process. These features are particularly appealing for practical forecasting situations where data are abundant or easily available, even though the theoretical model or the underlying relationship is - known. Furthermore, ANNs have been successfully applied to a wide range of forecasting problems in almost all areas of business, industry and engineering. In addition, ANNs have been proved to be a universal fu- tional approximator that can capture any type of complex relationships.

This volume summarizes and synthesizes an aspect of research work that has been done in the area of Generalized Convexity over the past few decades. Specifically, the book focuses on V-invex functions in vector optimization that have grown out of the work of Jeyakumar and Mond in the 1990's. The authors integrate related research into the book and demonstrate the wide context from which the area has grown and continues to grow.

The present lecture note is dedicated to the study of the optimality conditions and the duality results for nonlinear vector optimization problems, in ?nite and in?nite dimensions. The problems include are nonlinear vector optimization problems, s- metric dual problems, continuous-time vector optimization problems, relationships between vector optimization and variational inequality problems. Nonlinear vector optimization problems arise in several contexts such as in the building and interpretation of economic models; the study of various technolo- cal processes; the development of optimal choices in ?nance; management science; production processes; transportation problems and statistical decisions, etc. In preparing this lecture note a special effort has been made to obtain a se- contained treatment of the subjects; so we hope that this may be a suitable source for a beginner in this fast growing area of research, a semester graduate course in nonlinear programing, and a good reference book. This book may be useful to theoretical economists, engineers, and applied researchers involved in this area of active research. The lecture note is divided into eight chapters: Chapter 1 brie?y deals with the notion of nonlinear programing problems with basic notations and preliminaries. Chapter 2 deals with various concepts of convex sets, convex functions, invex set, invex functions, quasiinvex functions, pseudoinvex functions, type I and generalized type I functions, V-invex functions, and univex functions.