Three Books by SEBA Faculty in 2011

January 19, 2012

In addition to the 30+ articles published in peer-reviewed journals, SEBA professors have also been keeping busy by publishing books. Below are three published just in 2011:

Institutional Investors, Risk/Return Trade-offs and Corporate Governance Failures: Practical Lessons from the Global Financial Crisis, 2011, Jim Hawley, Shyam Kamath and Andy Williams, editors

The books consists of chapters by experts on various aspects of how corporate failures contributed to the 2007-09 financial crisis. It focuses on some of the largest institutional investors in the world, examining errors of omission and commission.

Epic Recession: Prelude to Global Depression, 2010, Jack Rasmus, published by Pluto Press (outside the US) and Palgrave-Macmillan (exclusively US)

The book is about how the recent recession is different from 'normal' recessions and depressions, and provides an explanation of both quantitatively and qualitatively epic recessions such as the present are different from 'normal' recessions. It thereafter examines historical case examples in the US of financial crisis-induced deep and long contractions of the US economy that are 'epic', specifically 1907-14 and 1929-31. The recent crisis of 2007-11 is also 'Type I' epic recession, similar to the US crisis of 1907-1914 and the early phase of 1929-1931. It is also similar to Japan in the 1990s. My theory of Epic Recession examines recession from the perspective of financial and non-financial variables and their contribution to economic system 'fragility'--including financial, consumption, and government balance sheet forms of 'fragility'.

Professor Rasmus is also the author of the forthcoming book this March 2012 entitled 'Obama's Economy: Recovery for the Few', which is a sequel to 'Epic Recession' and explains why traditional fiscal-monetary policies in an epic recession fail to generate a sustained economic recovery of the economy, such as has been the case in the US since mid-2009 to the present. In the book Professor Rasmus predicts the coming crisis in the Eurozone will transform the current 'Type I' epic recession today to a 'Type II' epic recession which he described in the first book.

Optimal Operating Strategies Under Stochastic Cash Flows, 2011, A. Sheth, Lambert Academic Publishing GmbH & Co. KG, 2011.

In this book, Professor Arnav Sheth devises and implements a fast and computationally efficient numerical - a technique that allows us to solve a certain class of complex optimization problems that are otherwise difficult, if not impossible, to solve. These include a variety of different problems, such as:

Is it optimal for a company to make risky investments (i.e., "go to Vegas") when it is under financial distress? Surprisingly, yes!

What happens to company that has a lot of infighting? The answer: It's not good -- if you have a lot of infighting, stay SMALL.
Is rewarding bad managers effective for the bottom line? Yes, it is. But it also induces them to take more risks.
And many more.