Book Recommendations

Books

Kleptocracy

In any situation where individuals may not understand what you’re talking about, folks will typically try to find something to relate it to from their own life. “Take something you know, and apply it in the field” - The shooting instructor in Jarhead. I usually see this when discussing my research/degree, which is fine - but it is sometimes difficult to explain. Often times, others imagine me as an accountant, they picture a stock broker, or (my personal favorite) they imagine some sort of Jack Ryan role. In reality, I study to be none of those things, or perhaps a little bit of all of those things. I chose to study financial economics and asset pricing because I find them imporant, and I’m interested in how the abuse and neglect of different financial institutions manipulate markets and potentially line the pockets of certain individuals.

Casey Michel recently wrote a fantastic book that describes in detail much of the development of the american financial system over the last 100 years. The book, American Kleptocracy, is valuable as much for the way in which it highlights differences unique to the american financial system as it does explain contemporary kleptocracy. Michel is also writing a new book, Foreign Agents, that I only hope will be as fantastic as the first.

Academic Texts

Derivatives

For those students interested in derivatives that also struggle with stochastic calculus (me, and I imagine most students), Steven Shreve authored two fantastic and pragmatic texts that cover discrete, Stochastic Calculus for Finance I: The Binomial Asset Pricing Model, and continuous, Stochastic Calculus for Finance II: Continuous-Time Models, models.

White Papers

CBDC

Realistically, any paper that the Fed releases is worth reading. Still, the concept of adapting the U.S. dollar to accomodate the advancement in cryptocurrencies is… wild. This paper, Money and Payments: The U.S. Dollar in the Age of Digital Transformation, is the first of what I’m sure will be many studies on the subject. There are also a number of interviews with congress on the plausibility of a CBDC, all worth checking out.

Additionally, in May Toni Whithed and others published a sort of ad hoc paper that examines the impact a CBDC may have on commercial banking, federal lending, and ‘frictions and synergies’.