The first volume in the Blackwell finance reference series of "Companions," Blackwell's Companion to Contemporary Finance focuses on the basic bread-and-butter issues in finance as well as popular contemporary topics often not covered in textbooks, including the drivers of globalization, global and international monetary and fiscal policies, Islamic finance and markets in the Middle East, international financial management, and more. Containing the most up-to-date data available in summary form, here is a comprehensive, state-of-the-art guide to the field of international finance that will prove indispensable to serious undergraduate students, graduate students, and academics in the field of finance.