National Cheng-Chi University
研究所MBA: Tuesdays 6:10-9 Commerce Building 260306 Yee-Tien (Ted) Fu
Undergraduate: Tuesdays 9:10:noon Commerce 260508 Autumn 2009 (3 units)

Course Objective

This course examines important issues in the rapidly evolving area of international financial markets. It focuses on various aspects of international portfolio management and open-economy macroeconomics, and is a natural extension to the theories and practical issues explored in Investments and/or Finance.

This course is aimed at students wishing to acquire a sound understanding of the main opportunities in international investments. For example, the relevance of hedging in the management of currency risk will be studied in light of theoretical results and empirical evidence. We will also briefly cover foreign direct investment (FDI), since in general, the revenue generated from FDI by U.S. firms is about three times as large as the revenue generated from the exporting of U.S. goods by U.S. firms.

Due to the ever increasing importance of international corporate governance, there is a corresponding need to decipher and use information in financial reports. At least one class meeting and one case study will touch on some key issues in international financial reporting and analysis, such as financial disclosure/transparency, incentives for off-balance sheet liabilities, hedge accounting, lease accounting, footnote disclosures, and intercorporate equity investments, and international financial reporting differences.

We will also use many real-life examples from market practices to emphasize the engineering dimensions of financial contract design (financial engineering), that market practitioners professionalize by blending theory with practice. Real financial contract examples will be discussed along with the relevant sections of the Levich text during the