A Quantitative Approach to Commercial Damages: Applying Statistics to the Measurement of Lost Profits, + Website

Preface

From years of presenting at conferences and seminars, participating in roundtable discussions and case study analyses, and mentoring fellow practitioners, it became obvious to us that the typical ABV, CBA, ASA, or CVA who was attempting to calculate economic damages either as a stream of lost profits or as lost value of the business using the direct market data method had little knowledge of either statistical methods or the advantages to be obtained by applying them to the task at hand.

This book is intended for practitioners who have some experience in the field of calculating economic damages and who are looking to acquire some new tools for their toolkit—tools that are more sophisticated and flexible than simple averaging techniques. These typical practitioners will remember little from their college statistics course and will not have access to or be capable of using stand-alone statistical packages such as SAS, SPSS, Stata, and so on. But they will be familiar with Excel, and our pedagogical approach is to demonstrate the use of the statistical tools that come either built into Excel or as add-ins that are freely or inexpensively available.

The level of knowledge that is required to get the maximum benefit from this book does not exceed that needed for an introductory statistics course. Therefore, this book is not designed for trained statisticians or PhDs in economics or finance whose education, knowledge, and training far exceed the fundamentals expounded herein. ...