KEY MESSAGE: InFinancial Markets and Institutions,best-selling authors Mishkin and Eakins provide a practical introduction to prepare readers for todayrs"s changing landscape of financial markets and institutions. A unifying framework uses a few core principles to organize readers'thinking then examines the models as real-world scenarios from a practitionerrs"s perspective. By analyzing these applications, readers develop the critical-thinking and problem-solving skills necessary to respond to challenging situations in their future careers. Introduction:Why Study Financial Markets and Institutions?; Overview of the Financial System.Fundamentals of Financial Markets:What Do Interest Rates Mean and What Is Their Role in Valuation?; Why Do Interest Rates Change?; How Do Risk and Term Structure Affect Interest Rates?; Are Financial Markets Efficient?Central Banking and the Conduct of Monetary Policy:Structure of Central Banks and the Federal Reserve System; Conduct of Monetary Policy: Tools, Goals, Strategy, and Tactics.Financial Markets:The Money Markets; The Bond Market; The Stock Market; The Mortgage Markets; The Foreign Exchange Market; The International Financial System.Fundamentals of Financial Institutions:Why Do Financial Institutions Exist?; What Should Be Done About Conflicts of Interest? A Central Issue in Business Ethics.The Financial Institutions Industry:Banking and the Management of Financial Institutions; Commercial Banking Industry: Structure and Competition; Savings Associations and Credit Unions; Banking Regulation; The Mutual Fund Industry; Insurance Companies and Pension Funds; Investment Banks, Security Brokers and Dealers, and Venture Capital Firms.The Management of Financial Institutions:Risk Management in Financial Institutions; Hedging with Financial Derivatives.On the Web:Finance Companies. For all readers interested in financial markets and institutions.

Frederic S. Mishkin is the Alfred Lerner Professor of Banking and Financial Institutions at the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University. Since receiving his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1976, he has taught at the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, Princeton University, and Columbia.

In addition to teaching, Mishkin is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a senior fellow at the FDIC Center for Banking Research, and president of the Eastern Economic Association. He is also the author of more than one hundred published articles and over ten textbooks. He is currently an academic consultant to and serves on the Economic Advisory Panel of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

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Stanley G. Eakins is the Associate Dean for the College of Business at East Carolina University. He received his PhD from Arizona State University and has served as vice president and comptroller for the First National Bank of Fairbanks.

A founder of the Denali Title and Escrow Agency and a contributor to journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Business and Economics and Journal of Financial Research, Professor Eakins is also the author of Finance: Institutions, Investments, and Management, Second Edition.