In this course, you will focus on understanding climate change and the risks and opportunities that it creates for businesses in the 21st century. You will analyze the current impacts of climate change on a global scale, and the investment shifts that are required to achieve a net-zero economy. Next, you will analyze the role of climate disclosures and their importance in ESG. You will also review private environmental governance, the active role that private companies are playing in combating climate change, and the parallels between the public and private sectors. Additionally, you will assess the insurance industry and the ways that it spreads risk, as well as creative ways that insurance as a form of private or public governance can build climate resilience. In the final module, you will review the concept of greenwashing: what is driving firms to make exaggerated environmental claims, why it is harmful, and examples of enforcement actions. Finally, you will learn about the importance of product stewardship. By the end of this course, you will have a thorough understanding of public and private environmental governance, the financial risks that unmitigated climate change is creating, climate disclosures, and innovative ways that business leaders can view and implement climate solutions.

In the previous course, you learned financial statement analysis and how to make estimate of future financial status. In this course, you are going to learn capital budgeting. That is, how to make an investment decision. You would like to select the best project among various projects you can take. Then, you need to know the criteria. In this course, you are going to learn investment decision criteria such as NPV and IRR, which are most popular decision rules. Using financial analysis and discounted cash flow method, you can make pro forma financial statement and estimate project cash flows. Then, you apply investment criteria to determine whether to invest or not. After learning how to apply NPV and IRR method to investment decision, you are going to learn how to evaluate NPV estimate and scenario, what-if analyses and break-even analysis. In addition to NPV and IRR, you are going to learn Payback period method and Profitability method to determine whether to invest or not when there is a political risk or capital rationing.

In this course, you will learn the foundations important to developing and implementing a financially analytic mindset. This course introduces the foundations of financial analysis, beginning with the first question: what is financial analysis? You will learn about the importance of adopting and applying a financial perspective. You will learn about accounting and finance principles and fundamentals. Accounting principles allow for the creation of consistent and reliable financial information. Key fundamentals of finance facilitate the use of a financially analytic mindset in different settings, including corporate and organizational, investment opportunities, and entrepreneurial settings. Ultimately, from this course, you will take away a strong foundational understanding of financial analysis, on which you can build further knowledge and skills related to financial analysis of organizations and organizational decisions and scenarios.

This is an introductory course on financial and management accounting. The first part of this course will introduce the basic accounting principles and accounting terminology to understand how a company keeps control of financial events and provides information on how it is performing. These basic concepts will support the analysis of financial reports companies prepare. We will go through balance sheet, income statement, financial statement, learning how to read and analyze them. The course will also provide the basis of management accounting introducing some techniques (e.g. break- even analysis or NPV) to support managers in making short-term and long-term decisions, such as "Is it convenient to dispose a production machine and buy a new one?" or "How many products should the company sell in order to break-even?" The course will bring examples and case studies that will help students better understand the practical applications of the basic accounting principles and techniques. At the end of the course, students will be able to read, understand and analyze financial documents and to apply simple techniques to analyse costs and evaluate capital investment decisions.

The purpose of this course is to provide you with a basic understanding of the connections between money, the financial system, and the broader macroeconomy. We will examine the economics of modern financial institutions (e.g. banks), including how they are organized, the products and financial services they offer, the risks they take, why and how they are regulated, and how this has changed over time. We will develop a conceptual framework that will allow us to assess how recent financial regulations as well as innovations in finance (e.g., securitization, fintech, cryptocurrencies) may influence the macroeconomic, financial, and business environment.

In this course, you will learn about latest investment strategies and performance evaluation. You will start by learning portfolio performance measures and discuss best practices in portfolio performance evaluation. You will explore different evaluation techniques such as style analysis and attribution analysis and apply them to evaluate different investment strategies. Special emphasis will be given to recent financial market innovations and current investment trends. After this course, learners will be able to: • Describe performance measurement measures • Evaluate portfolio performance • Describe and contrast different investment strategies • Propose investment strategy solutions

Learn how the blockchain authenticates transactions and distributes data to peers — nodes connected to the network. This course shows you how multiple versions of a blockchain are reconciled into one, discusses blockchain limitations, and delves into organizational applications of blockchain technology. This course requires the purchase of two books for the completion of assignments: Drescher, D. (2017). Blockchain Basics: A Non-Technical Introduction in 25 Steps. (ISBN-13: 978-1484226032) Antonoupoulos, A. M. (2017). The Internet of Money, Volume Two. (ISBN-13: 978-1947910065)

In the final course from the Machine Learning for Trading specialization, you will be introduced to reinforcement learning (RL) and the benefits of using reinforcement learning in trading strategies. You will learn how RL has been integrated with neural networks and review LSTMs and how they can be applied to time series data. By the end of the course, you will be able to build trading strategies using reinforcement learning, differentiate between actor-based policies and value-based policies, and incorporate RL into a momentum trading strategy. To be successful in this course, you should have advanced competency in Python programming and familiarity with pertinent libraries for machine learning, such as Scikit-Learn, StatsModels, and Pandas. Experience with SQL is recommended. You should have a background in statistics (expected values and standard deviation, Gaussian distributions, higher moments, probability, linear regressions) and foundational knowledge of financial markets (equities, bonds, derivatives, market structure, hedging).

How can businesses and investors help fill the multi-trillion-dollar gap needed for sustainable development? Simply put: by incorporating sustainability and social impact factors on people and planet into management decisions. Through this course, anyone can learn to improve their organization's practice of impact measurement and management and align their ESG or impact activities and reporting with emerging global standards. Impact Measurement and Management for the SDGs is a collaboration between UNDP SDG Impact and the award-winning team at CASE at Duke University. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is a steward of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that were launched in 2015 and to which 193 countries have signed up to achieve by 2030. The SDGs are a shared plan to end extreme poverty, reduce inequality, and protect the planet; they have become the world’s blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. But the public sector cannot meet those goals alone. Climate change, poverty, racial and gender equity, food, health, education, clean water − the list of challenges faced by people and planet is too long. Businesses and investors have stepped in to help. The course was designed around the fundamental elements of the SDG Impact Standards, the only management standards that embed sustainability at the core of an organization in the holistic way intended by the creators of the SDGs. The course demonstrates how the SDG Impact Standards help organizations align with responsible business principles, other standards, and best practices in impact management. In the course, you’ll learn to improve decision-making for positive impact on people and planet in line with the SDG Impact Standards and the Operating Principles for Impact Management. In the course, we have translated 4 universal practices of impact management into practical actions: SET STRATEGY, INTEGRATE, OPTIMIZE and REINFORCE. We teach the steps to implement these actions through short videos and lessons with concrete practical examples. Professionals who know how to apply these sustainable management standards are increasingly in demand by institutions globally as they work to improve their performance and reporting around ESG and impact management. If you work or wish to work within an enterprise, a corporation, a fund that manages assets or an asset owner or advisory that oversees investment assets, or if you just want to learn more about impact investing, ESG, social finance or corporate reporting, this course will help you master the core concepts and practices in impact management for the SDGs and other impacts from enterprise and investor perspectives. This course was written and is delivered by CASE Faculty Director Cathy Clark, and benefitted from extensive input from a larger team from UNDP, CASE, global academic advisors, and other experts. For a full list of acknowledgements, see: https://sites.duke.edu/casei3/for-practitioners/impact-measurement-and-management-for-the-sdgs-course/

In this 2-hour long project-based course, you will learn how to create a budget with fixed income to incorporate savings with a LibreOffice spreadsheet. You will learn to create formulas that will assist you in your journey. You will also create a working graph that will help visualize your savings as it continues to grow. Note: This course works best for learners who are based in the North American region. We’re currently working on providing the same experience in other regions.