Illustrating Finance Policy with Mathematica

Description

Students in various disciplines—from law and government to business and health policy—need to understand several quantitative aspects of finance (such as the capital asset pricing model or financial options) and policy analysis (e.g., assessing the weight of probabilistic evidence) but often have little quantitative background. This book illustrates those phenomena and explains how to illustrate them using the powerful visuals that computing can produce. Of particular interest to graduate students and scholars in need of sharper quantitative methods, this book introduces the reader to Mathematica, enables readers to use Mathematica to produce their own illustrations, and places specific emphasis on finance and policy as well as the foundations of probability theory. Front Matter ....Pages i-xxxv The Non-graphical Foundation: Coase and The Law’s Irrelevance (Nicholas L. Georgakopoulos)....Pages 1-10 Introduction to Mathematica: Hello World in Text and Graphics (Nicholas L. Georgakopoulos)....Pages 11-22 The Mathematical Frontier: Trigonometry, Derivatives, Optima, Differential Equations (Nicholas L. Georgakopoulos)....Pages 23-41 Money and Time (Nicholas L. Georgakopoulos)....Pages 43-54 The Capital Asset Pricing Model (Nicholas L. Georgakopoulos)....Pages 55-72 Options (Nicholas L. Georgakopoulos)....Pages 73-93 Illustrating Statistical Data (Nicholas L. Georgakopoulos)....Pages 95-111 Probability Theory: Imperfect Observations (Nicholas L. Georgakopoulos)....Pages 113-150 Financial Statements and Mergers (Nicholas L. Georgakopoulos)....Pages 151-180 Aversion to Risk (Nicholas L. Georgakopoulos)....Pages 181-199 Financial Crisis Contagion (Nicholas L. Georgakopoulos)....Pages 201-219 Back Matter ....Pages 221-226