Financial Market Rates and Flows

The first half of the book is devoted to the foundations for understanding interest-rate behavior: market equilibration, the mathematics of bond interest and money market yields, inflation, maturity, coupon rate, default risk, and bond price volatility. The remaining chapters use these foundations to explore a variety of derivative securities and their uses, the influence of taxes on interest-rate differentials, and the social allocation of capital in society. The institutional backdrop is presented in conjunction with concepts, not abstractly as separate chapters. This approach is more lively than the chapter-by-chapter treatment seen in most texts.