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This chapter discusses the challenges and support structures of MENA refugee women in their workforce transitions after resettlement in the United States. With a growing number of displaced individuals worldwide, the United States will undoubtedly continue to welcome immigrants and refugees in the coming years. While women comprise half of this population, MENA women participate in the US workforce at a far lower rate than do men from MENA. However, there is limited research examining workforce transitions for MENA refugee women once resettled. The partnerships of community stakeholders, including the education sector, non-government organizations, refugee agencies, and employers, are responsible for facilitating MENA refugee women toward self-sufficiency. Implications and suggestions for future research involving MENA refugee women are provided.

The effects of price limits and market illiquidity are crucial for pricing derivatives based on some underlying assets traded in the markets with a price limit rule and an illiquidity phenomenon. We develop models to value options for the cases of either the underlying assets encountering price limits and market illiquidity, or when the underlying assets are imposed with price limits and the options themselves show market illiquidity in this paper. The Black–Scholes (1973) model, the Krakovsky (1999) model, and the Ban, Choi, and Ku (2000) model are presented as special cases of our model. Our numerical results show that both the price limit and market illiquidity significantly affect the option values.

This chapter analyzes the empirical performance of alternative option pricing models using Black and Scholes (1973) as a benchmark. Specifically, we consider the Heston (1993) and Corrado and Su (1996) models and price call options on the S&P 500 index over the period from November 2010 to April 2011, evaluating each model by computing in- and out-of-sample pricing errors. We find that the two proposed models reduce both types of errors and mitigate the smile effect with respect to the benchmark. Moreover, in most of the cases, the model in Corrado and Su (1996) beats that in Heston (1993). Then, we conclude that skewness and kurtosis matter for option pricing purposes.

I survey applications of Markov switching models to the asset pricing and portfolio choice literatures. In particular, I discuss the potential that Markov switching models have to fit financial time series and at the same time provide powerful tools to test hypotheses formulated in the light of financial theories, and to generate positive economic value, as measured by risk-adjusted performances, in dynamic asset allocation applications. The chapter also reviews the role of Markov switching dynamics in modern asset pricing models in which the no-arbitrage principle is used to characterize the properties of the fundamental pricing measure in the presence of regimes.