Asset Prices, Booms and Recessions

"Asset Prices, Booms and Recessions" is a book on Financial Economics from a dynamic perspective. It focuses on the dynamic interaction of financial markets and economic activity. The financial markets to be studied here encompasses the money and bond market, credit market, stock market and foreign exchange market. Economic activity is described by the activity of firms, banks, households, governments and countries. The book shows how economic activity affects asset prices and the financial market and how asset prices and financial market volatility feed back to economic activity. The focus in this book is on theories, dynamic models and empirical evidence. Empirical applications relate to episodes of financial instability and financial crises of the U.S., Latin American, Asian as well as Euro-area countries. The current version of the book has moved to a more extensive coverage of the topics in financial economics by updating the literature in the appropriate chapters. Moreover it gives a more extensive treatment of new and more advanced topics in financial economics such as international portfolio theory, multi-agent and evolutionary approaches, capital asset pricing beyond consumption-based models and dynamic portfolio decisions. Overall, the book presents material that researchers and practitioners in financial engineering need to know about economic dynamics and that economists, practitioners and policy makers need to know about the financial market.