This volume contains selected papers that were presented at the
International Conference COMPUTATIONAL FINANCE 1997 held at London
Business School on December 15-17 1997. Formerly known as Neural
Networks in the Capital Markets (NNCM), this series of meetings has
emerged as a truly multi-disciplinary international conference and
provided an international focus for innovative research on the
application of a multiplicity of advanced decision technologies to many
areas of financial engineering. It has drawn upon theoretical advances
in financial economics and robust methodological developments in the
statistical, econometric and computer sciences. To reflect its
multi-disciplinary nature, the NNCM conference has adopted the new title
COMPUTATIONAL FINANCE. The papers in this volume are organised in six
parts. Market Dynamics and Risk, Trading and Arbitrage strategies,
Volatility and Options, Term-Structure and Factor models, Corporate
Distress Models and Advances on Methodology. This years' acceptance rate
(38%) reflects both the increasing interest in the conference and the
Programme Committee's efforts to improve the quality of the meeting
year-on-year. I would like to thank the members of the programme
committee for their efforts in refereeing the papers. I also would like
to thank the members of the computational finance group at London
Business School and particularly Neil Burgess, Peter Bolland, Yves
Bentz, and Nevil Towers for organising the meeting.