With the Bologna Accords a bachelor-master-doctor curriculum has been introduced in various
countries with the intention that students may enter the job market already at the bachelor
level. Since financial Institutions provide non negligible job opportunities also for
mathematicians and scientists in general it appeared to be appropriate to have a financial
mathematics course already at the bachelor level in mathematics. Most mathematical techniques
in use in financial mathematics are related to continuous time models and require thus notions
from stochastic analysis that bachelor students do in general not possess. Basic notions and
methodologies in use in financial mathematics can however be transmitted to students also
without the technicalities from stochastic analysis by using discrete time (multi-period)
models for which general notions from Probability suffice and these are generally familiar to
students not only from science courses but also from economics with quantitative curricula.
There do not exists many textbooks for multi-period models and the present volume is intended
to fill in this gap. It deals with the basic topics in financial mathematics and for each
topic there is a theoretical section and a problem section. The latter includes a great
variety of possible problems with complete solution.
