資産評価やリスク管理などの複合的な問題の解決に、高度な数学・統計学・計量経済学の手法やコンピュータを駆使するなど、金融工学は今日の経済に大きな役割を果たしています。本書は統計と微積分の基本を踏まえた読者であれば、金融工学に関する事前知識がなくとも理解できるよう裁定理論の概念を繙きます。そしてこれが金利、延払信用取引、資産運用、リスク管理にどう当てはめられるのか解説します。また、今日の金融工学が抱える喫緊の課題についても概観します。
  

• Offers an overview of mathematical finance today
• Discusses developments to mathematical finance in the wake of the 2008 financial crash
• Introduces arbitrage theory, and how it is key to pricing financial contracts, to credit trading, fund management, and the setting of interest rates
• Accessible to readers with a basic knowledge of statistics and calculus

  
In recent years the finance industry has mushroomed to become an important part of modern economies, and many science and engineering graduates have joined the industry as quantitative analysts, with mathematical and computational skills that are needed to solve complex problems of asset valuation and risk management. An important parallel story exists of scientific endeavour. Between 1965-1995, insightful ideas in economics about asset valuation were turned into a mathematical 'theory of arbitrage', an enterprise whose first achievement was the famous 1973 Black-Scholes formula, followed by extensive investigations using all the resources of modern analysis and probability. The growth of the finance industry proceeded hand-in-hand with these developments. Now new challenges arise to deal with the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis and to take advantage of new technology, which has revolutionized the practice of trading. 
  
This Very Short Introduction introduces readers with no previous background in this area to arbitrage theory and why it works the way it does. Illuminating pricing theory, Mark Davis explains its applications to interest rates, credit trading, fund management and risk management. He concludes with a survey of the most pressing issues in mathematical finance today.