Professor Alan J. Marcus is a Professor of Finance in the Wallace E. Carroll School of Management at Boston College (USA). His main research interests are in derivatives and securities markets. He is co-author (with Zvi Bodie and Alex Kane) of the textbooks Investments 11th edition and Essentials of Investments. Professor Alan has served as a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He also spent 2 years at Freddie Mac, where Alan helped to develop mortgage pricing and credit risk models. He currently serves on the Research Foundation Advisory Board of the CFA Institute.