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The Altman Z-Score is a linear discriminant model developed by Edward I. Altman in 1968 to predict corporate bankruptcy using five accounting-based financial ratios. Derived through multiple discriminant analysis on a matched sample of 66 US manufacturing firms, the model combines liquidity, profitability, leverage, so
Analytical procedures are evaluations of financial information made by studying plausible relationships among both financial and non-financial data. Rather than testing individual transactions, auditors develop expectations about what numbers should be and compare them to actual results, investigating significant diffe
The Bates model (1996) combines stochastic volatility and jump diffusion to capture both the volatility smile and the implied volatility skew observed in equity and currency option markets. It extends the Heston model by adding a Poisson jump component to returns, making it suitable for pricing options when sudden pric
The Beneish M-Score is a statistical model developed by Messod Beneish in 1999 to identify whether a company has manipulated its reported earnings. The model combines eight financial-statement ratios into a single composite score using coefficients estimated from a probit regression on a sample of detected earnings man
The binomial option pricing model, introduced by John Cox, Stephen Ross, and Mark Rubinstein in 1979, prices options by modelling the underlying as a discrete tree in which the price moves up or down by fixed factors at each step. Working backward from the option's payoff at maturity using risk-neutral probabilities, i
The Black-Litterman model, introduced by Fischer Black and Robert Litterman in 1992, is a Bayesian portfolio allocation framework that blends market-equilibrium returns with an investor's own views to produce more stable, intuitive portfolios. It was designed to cure the extreme concentration and input sensitivity of c
The Black-Scholes-Merton model, published by Fischer Black and Myron Scholes in 1973 with the theoretical framework extended by Robert Merton, gives a closed-form no-arbitrage price for European options. By assuming the underlying asset follows geometric Brownian motion with constant volatility, it derives a partial di
The CAMELS Rating System is a supervisory framework used by US bank regulators to evaluate the overall condition of financial institutions across six dimensions: Capital Adequacy, Asset Quality, Management, Earnings, Liquidity, and Sensitivity to Market Risk. Each component is scored on a scale of 1 (strong) to 5 (crit
The Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), developed by William Sharpe and John Lintner in the mid-1960s, links the expected return of an asset to its systematic risk, measured by beta. It states that in equilibrium investors are rewarded only for risk that cannot be diversified away: the expected excess return of an asse
Change of numeraire is a mathematical technique for simplifying option pricing by changing the choice of discount factor (numeraire). By selecting a numeraire aligned with the payoff structure, complex problems become simple. The technique is essential for LIBOR market models and multi-currency derivatives.
Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR), also called Expected Shortfall, is a coherent tail-risk measure that quantifies the conditional expectation of losses beyond the Value-at-Risk threshold. It was introduced for optimization by Rockafellar and Uryasev (2000) and shown to be coherent by Acerbi and Tasche (2002), and it ha
Contingent Valuation (CVM), developed by Robert Davis in the 1960s, is a survey-based method for estimating the economic value of non-market environmental goods and services—such as wilderness preservation, air quality, or species protection—by directly asking people their willingness to pay (WTP) for specified improve
The copula CDO model (Li 2000) uses Gaussian copulas to price collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) by modeling joint default probabilities across a portfolio of bonds. The model became the industry standard for CDO pricing but was heavily criticized post-2008 for underestimating tail risk and correlation breakdowns d
Copula models are a family of functions that describe the dependence structure between variables separately from their individual (marginal) distributions. The foundation is Sklar's theorem (1959), which shows that any multivariate distribution can be split into its marginals plus a copula; Joe (1997) developed the mod
Credit risk models estimate the probability that a borrower defaults and the resulting distribution of credit losses. The structural approach was introduced by Robert C. Merton in 1974, treating a firm's equity as a call option on its assets, and was later extended into the KMV distance-to-default framework and the Cre
Credit scoring is a statistical technique that estimates the probability that a borrower will default on a financial obligation. Using Weight of Evidence (WoE) binning, Information Value (IV) variable selection, and logistic regression, it converts raw applicant data into a single integer score. Formalized by Hand and
Credit Valuation Adjustment (CVA) is the market price of counterparty credit risk embedded in over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives. CVA measures the loss from counterparty default, accounting for both the probability of default and the exposure at that time. It has become a key component of derivative valuation and risk
DCC-GARCH is Engle's (2002) multivariate volatility model that lets the correlations between several assets change over time. A separate univariate GARCH model is fitted to each series, and then the dynamic correlation matrix is estimated in a second, separate step.
Debit Valuation Adjustment (DVA) represents the value of your own credit risk to counterparties. DVA measures the gain in derivative value if you default on your obligations—a benefit for your shareholders because creditors receive less than the full derivative value. DVA is controversial but now mandatory under IFRS 1
The Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides (DMP) model, developed by Peter Diamond, Dale Mortensen, and Christopher Pissarides in the early 1980s, is a fundamental framework for understanding labor market dynamics through the lens of search and matching frictions. It explains how workers and firms meet, form employment relations
DuPont Analysis is a financial performance framework that decomposes Return on Equity (ROE) into three multiplicative components: net profit margin, asset turnover, and the equity multiplier. Originally developed by engineers at DuPont Corporation in the early 1920s, the method gained renewed academic prominence throug
The event study is a financial research method that measures the impact of a news release, policy change, or corporate event on asset prices through cumulative abnormal returns. Reviewed by MacKinlay (1997) and formalised econometrically by Kothari and Warner (2007), it is the standard tool for testing the efficient-ma
Extreme Value Theory is a statistical framework for modelling the rare events that live in the tail of a probability distribution. As developed in Coles (2001) and applied to risk by McNeil, Frey & Embrechts (2005), it offers two standard routes: the Generalized Extreme Value (GEV) distribution for block maxima and the
A factor risk model is a multi-factor framework that links asset returns to systematic risk factors such as the market, value, size, and momentum. The Fama-French three- and five-factor models (1993) and Ross's Arbitrage Pricing Theory (1976) decompose portfolio risk and detect alpha.
Automatic differentiation (AD) is a computational technique for computing derivatives (Greeks) by differentiating the computer code that computes the option price. AD avoids manual derivation of formulas and finite-difference approximations, yielding exact sensitivities with machine precision. It has become essential f
The HAR-RV model, introduced by Fulvio Corsi in 2009, forecasts realized volatility by decomposing it into daily, weekly, and monthly components. It is a simple linear regression that mirrors how market participants with different investment horizons react to volatility, and it naturally captures the long-memory behavi
The hedonic pricing model, developed by Sherwin Rosen in 1974 and building on Kevin Lancaster's characteristics theory (1966), is an econometric method for valuing the implicit prices of product attributes by regressing market prices on observed characteristics. It reveals the trade-offs consumers are willing to make a
The Heath-Jarrow-Morton (HJM) framework (1992) is a general no-arbitrage approach to modeling the entire term structure of forward rates. Unlike short-rate models, HJM works directly with forward rates f(t,T) and specifies their volatility; the drift is then determined by arbitrage constraints. This flexibility enables
The Hull-White model (1990) is a one-factor short-rate model with time-dependent mean reversion and volatility, designed to fit the initial yield curve exactly. It generalizes the Vasicek model to allow better calibration to observed bond and derivative prices, and is widely used for pricing interest rate exotics and m
Interest rate models are structural models that describe how interest rates evolve over time within a stochastic differential equation framework. The family covers Vasicek's normal short-rate process (1977), the CIR square-root process, the adjustable Hull-White extension, and the Nelson-Siegel approach to fitting the
The Johansen procedure is a multivariate cointegration framework, introduced by Søren Johansen in 1991, that tests for long-run equilibrium relationships among several I(1) time series. It determines how many cointegrating vectors link the series and then builds a Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) to describe the sh
The Merton Jump-Diffusion model, introduced by Robert C. Merton in 1976, extends Geometric Brownian Motion by adding sudden price jumps generated by a Poisson process. It captures the volatility smile and the fat-tailed return behaviour that standard Black-Scholes cannot explain, and is widely used in option pricing an
The Kalman filter is a recursive algorithm that estimates financial models with time-varying parameters, hidden factors, and noisy observations inside a dynamic state-space framework. The structural time series treatment was set out by Harvey (1989), with state-space and regime-switching extensions developed by Kim and
The Kelly Criterion (1956) is a formula for optimal bet sizing that maximizes the long-run logarithmic growth of wealth. It specifies the optimal fraction of capital to risk on each trade based on win probability and payoff ratio. The criterion has become foundational in quantitative trading, portfolio management, and
The LIBOR Market Model (BGM), developed by Brace, Gatarek, and Musiela (1997), is a multi-factor interest rate model that directly models forward LIBOR rates as lognormal processes. Unlike short-rate models, LMM naturally prices caplets at the market level and is the industry standard for valuing caps, floors, and exot
Liquidity Risk Models are a family of measures that quantify how easily an asset trades by capturing its price impact, its effective bid-ask spread, and a holding-period adjustment. The family brings together the Amihud illiquidity ratio (Amihud, 2002), the Roll serial-covariance spread estimator (Roll, 1984), and the
Dupire's local volatility model (1994) is a deterministic framework that extracts a term and strike-dependent volatility function from market option prices. Unlike constant volatility, local volatility perfectly fits the observed implied volatility smile and is implemented via finite difference methods for European and
Long-memory models are fractional-integration methods that capture genuine long memory through a hyperbolically decaying autocorrelation structure. ARFIMA, introduced by Granger and Joyeux (1980), models long memory in return series, while FIGARCH, introduced by Baillie, Bollerslev and Mikkelsen (1996), captures long m
Market microstructure analysis studies how prices form from tick-level trade and quote data, examining order-book dynamics, the bid-ask spread, and price discovery. The modern econometric framework was set out by Hasbrouck (2007) and extended for high-frequency data by Aït-Sahalia and Jacod (2014).
Mean-variance portfolio optimization is the foundational model of modern portfolio theory, introduced by Harry Markowitz in 1952. It describes portfolios in an expected-return versus risk (variance) plane and traces the efficient frontier of allocations that offer the highest expected return for each level of risk, cov
The Merton model (1974) is a structural approach to credit risk in which a firm defaults when its asset value falls below liabilities at maturity. Equity is viewed as a call option on firm value, and debt is an implicit short put position. The model links company fundamentals (asset volatility) to default probability a
The Overlapping Generations Model, pioneered by Paul Samuelson in 1958 and extended by Peter Diamond in 1965, is a macroeconomic framework where successive generations of individuals live for finite periods and coexist at any point in time. It addresses how consumption, savings, and capital accumulation evolve across g
Pairs trading is a quantitative trading strategy that takes a long-short position on two cointegrated assets when the gap (spread) between their prices shows mean reversion. It was popularised as a relative-value arbitrage rule by Gatev, Goetzmann and Rouwenhorst (2006) and framed quantitatively by Vidyamurthy (2004).
Risk Factor PCA is a dimension-reduction method that decomposes the return covariance matrix of many assets into a small set of orthogonal principal components interpreted as systematic risk factors. Litterman and Scheinkman (1991) used it to show that bond returns are driven by a few common factors, and Connor and Kor
The Ramsey-Cass-Koopmans model, developed initially by Frank Ramsey in 1928 and formalized by David Cass and Tjalling Koopmans in 1965, is the workhorse model of macroeconomic growth theory. It describes how rational consumers optimize consumption and savings over an infinite horizon, subject to an aggregate production
The Real Business Cycle (RBC) model, developed by Finn Kydland and Edward Prescott in 1982, is a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium framework that explains macroeconomic fluctuations as rational responses to exogenous technological shocks. Unlike Keynesian models that emphasize demand-side factors and nominal rigid
Realized volatility estimates an asset's variance directly from high-frequency intraday returns rather than from a parametric latent process. The Heterogeneous Autoregressive (HAR) model of Corsi (2009), building on the realized-volatility framework of Andersen, Bollerslev, Diebold and Labys (2003), forecasts this meas
The Markov regime-switching model, introduced by James D. Hamilton in 1989, is a hidden-state time-series model in which financial series such as returns or volatility behave with different parameters across distinct economic regimes (bull/bear or high/low volatility). It is the financial application of Hamilton's MS-A
Risk parity is a portfolio weighting model, formalised by Maillard, Roncalli and Teïletche (2010), in which every asset contributes an equal share of the total portfolio risk. It needs only the covariance (risk) structure of the assets and no forecast of expected returns, and it underpins Bridgewater's All Weather stra
Risk-neutral valuation (1979) is the fundamental principle that derivative prices equal the expected payoff discounted at the risk-free rate, computed under a risk-neutral probability measure (Q-measure). This principle, formalized by Harrison and Kreps, eliminates the need to estimate risk premia and is the foundation
The SABR (Stochastic Alpha-Beta-Rho) model is a stochastic volatility framework introduced by Hagan et al. in 2002 for valuing interest rate derivatives. It captures the smile effect in implied volatility through correlated Brownian motions and has become industry standard for swaption and caplet pricing.
The Slutsky equation, derived by Russian economist Eugen Slutsky in 1915, is a fundamental identity in microeconomics that decomposes the total change in demand for a good into two effects: the substitution effect and the income effect. Formalizing John Hicks' later interpretation, it provides the mathematical foundati
The stochastic volatility model is a continuous-time option-pricing and risk framework in which volatility follows its own random process rather than staying constant. The Heston model, introduced by Steven Heston in 1993, gives the variance a mean-reverting square-root (CIR) dynamic and yields a closed-form option pri
Tail risk measures quantify the loss distribution beyond Value-at-Risk (VaR). Expected Shortfall — the expected loss given that VaR is exceeded — is the leading coherent risk measure, formalised by Artzner, Delbaen, Eber and Heath (1999) and shown to be coherent by Acerbi and Tasche (2002). Spectral and expectile-based
The Travel Cost Method (TCM), developed by Harold Hotelling in 1949 and formalized by Marion Clawson and Jack Knetsch in the 1960s, is an econometric approach for valuing recreational sites and environmental amenities by inferring value from the travel costs (transportation, time, entry fees) that people incur to visit
VaR backtesting is a family of statistical tests that validate a risk model by comparing its Value-at-Risk forecasts against realised losses. It builds on Kupiec's (1995) unconditional coverage test, Christoffersen's (1998) conditional coverage test, and the Engle-Manganelli Dynamic Quantile (DQ) test.