Financial engineering: Methods and cases

This textbook contains materials for several courses which are taught in the Master’s Programme in Financial Engineering that is run at the Poznań University of Economics and Business. The book consists of seven chapters that cover the main areas of quantitative finance: investment, financial instruments pricing, financial risk measuring and management as well as corporate finance. The main part of the book is devoted to the mathematical models used in the field of finance. There are four chapters devoted to the pricing of financial instruments: from pricing equities using Capital Asset Pricing Model, through derivative instruments on equites, to more complicated derivatives on interest rates. The last topic is illustrated with some genuine examples from the markets in the post-crisis period. One chapter describes basic models and concepts used in measuring financial risk. Two other chapters are about investment. One describes the way in which companies finance their activities. The second one describes investment strategies of hedge funds. All chapters contain exercises and examples from the real markets. In order to understand the topics from the textbook, some prerequisites are required. It is assumed that a potential reader knows the basics of probability theory, linear algebra and calculus. The knowledge of econometrics and statistical methods used in economics will also be useful in better comprehension of the book. All these issues are usually taught in Bachelor’s programmes in Economics or Finance.