This book presents a rigorous mathematical treatment of the theory of pricing and hedging of derivative securities by the principle of "no arbitrage". The first part presents a relatively elementary introduction, restricting itself to the case of finite probability spaces. The second part consists of an updated edition of seven original research papers by the authors, which analyzes the topic in the general framework of semi-martingale theory.

Walter Schachermeyer, born in 1950 in Linz, Austria, has received--as the first mathematician--the 1998 Wittgenstein Award, Austria's highest honor for scienctific achievement. Since 1998 he holds the Chair for Actuarial and Financial Mathematics at the Vienna University of Technolgoy. Among his achievements is the proof of the "Fundamental Theorem of Asset Pricing" in its general form, which was done in joint work with Freddy Delbaen.

Freddy Delbaen, born in 1946 in Duffel/Antwerpen, Belgium, is Professor for Financial Mathematics at the ETH in Zurich since 1995.