This volume features a selection of contributions presented at the 2018 Wroclaw Conference in Finance, which cover a wide range of topics in finance and financial economics, e.g. financial markets; monetary policy; corporate, personal and public finance; and risk management and insurance. Reflecting the diversity and richness of research areas in the field, the papers discuss both fundamental and applied finance, and offer a detailed analysis of current financial-market problems, including specifics of the Polish and Central European markets. They also examine the results of advanced financial modeling. Accordingly, the proceedings offer a valuable resource for researchers at universities and policy institutions, as well as graduate students and practitioners in economics and finance at both private and government organizations.

Krzysztof Jajuga is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Financial Investments and Risk Management at Wroclaw University of Economics, Poland. He obtained his doctoral degree in Economics from the same university in 1982. At the beginning of his scientific career he received a Fulbright grant to study at Stanford University, Department of Statistics. He has since been a visiting professor at many universities in the USA, as well as in Europe and China. His main research interests are in financial econometrics, capital markets, and risk analysis and management. Among others he holds the position of President of the CFA Society Poland.

Karsten Staehr is a Professor of Economics at Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia and also a research supervisor at the Bank of Estonia. He holds a master's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and master's and PhD degrees from the University of Copenhagen. His main research interests are in macroeconomics, international finance, public economics and transition studies. He is an associate editor of the Baltic Journal of Economics and serves on the editorial board of Post-Communist Economies and Economic Systems.

Lucjan T. Orlowski is a Professor of Economics and International Finance, as well as the Program Director for the DBA in Finance at John F. Welch College of Business, Sacred Heart University, USA. He obtained his PhD from the University of Economics in Katowice, Poland. He has been a visiting professor and research fellow at many international institutions and universities. Currently he is a Senior Fellow at the Center for European Integration Studies (ZEI), University of Bonn, Germany. He has been an advisor to many institutions and governments, including the Czech National Bank, Hungarian National Bank, and Argentinian Central Bank. He specializes in monetary and fiscal policy, macro-finance, and transition and growth in post-communist countries.   

Hermann Locarek-Junge has been a Professor of Finance and Financial Services at the TU Dresden since 1995. He completed his PhD at the University of Augsburg, Germany in 1987. He also studied Business Informatics and was appointed a Professor in that field at Essen University in 1991. Since then, he has been a visiting professor and research fellow at various international institutions and universities. Throughout his career, he has done research work for several banks and organizations, including Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank, Sparkasse Dresden, Union Investment, and the German National Research Foundation (DFG).