Into the Unknown
Administrative Agencies Administrative agencies are government entities that are housed in the executive branch. They make rules, investigate violations, enforce rules. Every administrative agency only has power because Congress passed some statute (called enabling legislation) that gave it power. Executive agencies Firmly housed within the executive branch, do what the president says.E.g.: FBI. Independent agencies…
Introduction to Corporate FinanceUniversity of Pennsylvania Corporate finance is complex. If there is a Big Bang Theory for it, I believe the “infinitely hot and dense single point” definitely will be “the time value of money”. This fantastic course, starting from this point, introduces all the basic concepts you need. Inflation, interest rates, time structures,…
In the 1930s, Jerzy Nayman and others made some very important breakthroughs in this area and his work enabled researchers to use random sampling as a technique to measure populations. It means we did not have to measure every single unit in the population to make statements about the population (inference). The first important step…
Hyman Minsky had something called financial instability hypothesis, suggesting that there was something inherently unstable about financial system and that the role of the central banks is to kind of put bounds on that and prevent it from flying off into space. Flow of Funds Flow of Funds is a set of accounts that was…
Vector Calculus is also known as Multivariate Calculus or “Calculus 3”. Calculus 1 and 2 are Differential Calculus and Integral Calculus respectively (both are single variate). Vectors A vector is a quantity that has a length associated with it, and a direction. It is not anchored in any particular spot. Besides, scalars are quantities that…
Understanding Financial Statements: Company PerformanceUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign This course mainly focuses on Income Statement and Statement of Cash Flows, both help you gain a boarder perspective and answer the important question: “How does the company perform?”. This is beginner level course, so only basic line items are introduced: revenue, cost of goods sold,…
There are 2 perspectives to look at linear equation systems, row view and column view. Both are equivalent, sometimes row view is more intuitive, sometimes column view is easier to understand. Linear Equations (n = 2) By row Each equation represents a straight line on the x-y plane.The intersection is the only point on both…
Bank Financing Sureties and Guarantors Sureties and guarantors are people who agree to be liable for a debt in the event that the primary debtor refuses to pay, or is unable to pay. In order to convince a bank to lend you some money, you can either gather up some collateral and pledge it as…
A few things about Allyn Young He goes against economic orthodoxy. There are 3 dimensions where he is engaging with the economics. There are 3 more dimensions where he engages with the outside world: Civil War Finance Government is fighting a foe and it has to mobilize as many resources as possible in order to…
An organization could benefit from Lean in many ways: Customer focus Focus on customers, it is much cheaper to satisfy and keep a customer, than to find new ones. Culture change Change of culture is critically important and difficult. Satisfied engaged employees will in turn satisfy and delight customers. Capacity Increase capacity without addition of…
Time Value of Money Money received or paid at different time is like different currencies. You can’t add it. Money has a time unit. You must convert them to a common unit to aggregate. Typically we refer to time 0 as today on the time line. Get in the habit of placing cash flows on…
A team is a group of people working together to achieve a common purpose for which they hold themselves mutually accountable. There are many circumstances where teams perform better than individuals. We all have certain skills and abilities. Working on a team allows you to collaborate with others who have different skills and abilities and…
Financial statements are representations or substitute attributes meant to measure attributes of a company. Income Statement Balance sheet is like a photograph taken on a particularly date. Meanwhile income statement depicts what occurred during the period that changed the company’s position from the beginning of the period to its position at the end of the…
Operations Research (1): Models and ApplicationsNational Taiwan University This is an amazing beginner-level course about Operations Research (abbr. OR). Simply put, it is all about optimization and decision-making. It is deep-rooted in math, but its emphasis on practical applications makes OR even more beautiful. Firstly, the course introduces basic concepts, then 3 fundamental models are…
In many cases, we need to deal with nonlinear situations, e.g.: product pricing decision, inventory, portfolio optimization. Above all, the purpose is to find a balance between tradeoffs. Usually non-linear programs are more general than the linear programs. Formulating non-linear program is usually easy because you rarely use weird constraints; but its optimization would be…