Credit risk analysis is one of the most important topics in the field of financial risk management. Due to recent financial crises and regulatory concern of Basel II, credit risk analysis has been the major focus of financial and banking industry. Especially for some credit-granting institutions such as commercial banks and credit companies, the ability to discriminate good customers from bad ones is crucial. The need for reliable quantitative models that predict defaults accurately is imperative so that the interested parties can take either preventive or corrective action. Hence credit risk...

The foreign exchange market is one of the most complex dynamic markets with the characteristics of high volatility, nonlinearity and irregularity. Since the Bretton Woods System collapsed in 1970s, the fluctuations in the foreign exchange market are more volatile than ever. Furthermore, some important factors, such as economic growth, trade development, interest rates and inflation rates, have significant impacts on the exchange rate fluctuation. Meantime, these characteristics also make it extremely difficult to predict foreign exchange rates. Therefore, exchange rates forecasting has become...