Most anywhere in the developed world, I can use a small rectangular piece of plastic, issued to me by a bank I have never visited, to obtain local currency or purchase goods and services directly from a merchant. The cashier and I may not even speak a common language, and the face of my card may look quite different from those carried...

Payment systems are the indispensable infrastructure for financial markets and business activities. Every commercial trade and financial transaction is finalized only when the final settlement is made through a payment system. If operational failures would occur in a payment system, preventing smooth transfers of funds, national economies and...

This book was conceived one balmy March evening on the banks of the river Brisbane, in Queensland, Australia, where I had just arrived for a sabbatical, and it became clear that the traditions of measurement science and MRI should meet. The notion of a guide, a cook-book, for quantitative MRI (qMR) techniques took seed, and attained its own...

Discrete Fourier Analysis and Wavelets presents a thorough introduction to the mathematical foundations of signal and image processing. Key concepts and applications are addressed in a thought-provoking...

Many of the assumptions that underpin mainstream macroeconomic models have been challenged as a result of the traumatic events of the recent financial crisis. Thus, until recently, it was widely agreed that although the stock of money had a role to play, in practice it could be ignored as long as we used short-term nominal interest rates as...

Despite concerns regarding diminishing bank...

The U.S. economy has become crippled by the credit and real estate catastrophe. Even though we've all been affected by the calamity and have heard no shortage of news about it, it still seems unfathomable and utterly incomprehensible to most people that...