This paper is the introduction to the forthcoming book, Recent Developments in Alternative Finance: Empirical Assessments and Economic Implications, Proceedings of Second International Symposium in Computational Economics and Finance. The conference was held in Tunis, Tunisia, March 15-17, 2012....

Since the publication of Friedman’s (1977) Nobel lecture, the relationship between the mean function of the inflation stochastic process and its uncertainty has been the subject of much research. Friedman postulated that high inflation causes increased inflation uncertainty. Ball (1992)...