Estimating time-varying currency betas with contagion: New evidence from developed and emerging financial markets

This paper examines the conditional time-varying currency betas from five developed and six emerging financial markets with contagion and spillover effects. We employ a trivariate asymmetric BEKK-type GARCH-in-Mean (MGARCH-M) approach to estimate the time-varying conditional variance and covariance of returns of stock market index, the world market portfolio and bilateral exchange rate between the US dollar and the local currency. The results show that the world market and currency risks are not only priced in the stock markets, but also time-varying. It is found that currency betas are much more volatile than the world market betas, and currency betas in the emerging markets are more volatile than those in the developed markets. We find empirical evidence of contagion effect and spillovers between stock market and foreign exchange market during the recent global financial crisis, and the effect is stronger in the emerging markets than that in the developed markets. Two applications are provided to illustrate the usefulness of time-varying currency betas.     

Correlations in Returns and Volatilities in Pacific-Rim Stock Markets

Most studies on the correlations in stock returns and volatilities focus on the contemporaneous relationships and spillover effects in major stock markets such as the US and Japan. This paper adds to the literature by focusing on the dynamic relationship in the volatilities of the returns in the Pacific-Rim stock markets. The causality in variances test method of Cheung and Ng (1996), a multivariate GARCH model and VAR analyses are employed to model conditional volatilities and study the dynamic responses of volatilities to innovations in conditional variances. The results suggest that while the stock markets are correlated in returns and volatilities contemporaneously and with lags, idiosyncratic factors play important roles in national stock markets. In addition, the dynamic adjustment of the market return volatilities can take a much longer time than previously reported in some of the countries studied.     

Stock market uncertainty and uncovered equity parity deviation: Evidence from Asia

Recently, many empirical studies document that a country's stock market performance relative to the US and its local currency units per US dollar tend to move in opposite direction over the short run, also known as the uncovered equity parity (UEP) condition. However, those studies have applied only to advanced economies to date. This study conducted the same tests to a sample of 18 Asian economies. To one's surprise, we found that the UEP condition reverses its sign among Asian currencies. In addition, measures of stock market uncertainty are suggested as a potential driving force behind this UEP reversal for Asian economies. This surprising result suggests that there might be other mechanisms behind the joint dynamics of equity and currency returns than the portfolio rebalancing caused by incomplete foreign exchange risk hedging. The reasoning is that Asian foreign exchange (FX) markets are even more subject to incomplete foreign exchange risk hedging. Thus, one should expect even stronger UEP evidence from Asian currency markets if the portfolio rebalancing mechanism was the only force at play.     

THE PRICE OF RISK IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN EQUITY MARKET

This paper investigates domestic risk–return behaviour by focussing on the intertemporal relationship between the conditional domestic equity market premium, its conditional variance and its conditional covariance with the international equity market. The paper finds that the domestic equity market prices in both domestic and international diversification risk. The estimated daily price of domestic variance risk is 0.0279% (EAR: 7.28%) for every one unit of expected domestic variance. The estimated daily price of covariance risk is 0.0111% (EAR: 2.83%) for every unit of expected covariance risk. The representative domestic investor values domestic variance more than covariance risk. The variances of domestic and international equity returns are found to be time‐varying, as is the covariance between the two. Evidence is found that the Johannesburg Securities Exchange is not perfectly integrated with the world economy, in an absolute sense. The volatility spillover effect is observed to be both significant and positive. The standard Capital Asset Pricing Model misspecifies the return to domestic risk, biasing the risk–return coefficient upwards. Domestic investors are rewarded for holding internationally diversified portfolios, with an internationally diversified portfolio expected to have an additional daily return of 0.0238% (EAR: 6.29%) for the same level of risk as an entirely domestic equity portfolio.     

基于金融周期视角下股票市场的联动效应研究

世界经济全球化已成为趋势,发达经济体的股市之间以及发达经济体与新兴经济体股市之间的联动性也在经济全球化的趋势中更加紧密。各国金融领域以及金融市场间的快速融合,不断形成统一规范的金融行为准则,也使得全球金融周期性特征越来越明显。文章选取世界五个主要股票市场指数为研究对象,按照已有研究对全球金融周期的划分,将该样本区间分成了繁荣期、衰退期和正常期三个阶段,然后基于这三个阶段分析了在不同金融周期五国股票市场指数收益率联动效应。基于实证研究结论,认为美国和欧洲股市联动性较强,与亚洲股市联动性相对较弱,且美国和中国股市之间联动性最弱,基本捕捉不到下尾相关。相关实证结论有利于国际投资者的投资组合管理,也有助于各国股票市场的风险规避。     

LIQUIDITY AND THE INFORMATIONAL EFFICIENCY OF AFRICAN STOCK MARKETS

The hypothesis that a stock market price index follows a random walk is tested for 11 African stock markets, Botswana, Côte d'Ivoire, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, Tunisia and Zimbabwe using joint variance ratio tests with finite-sample critical values, over the period beginning in January 2000 and ending in September 2006. The iid random walk hypothesis is rejected in all 11 markets. In four stock markets, Egypt, Nigeria, Tunisia and South Africa, weekly returns are a martingale difference sequence. Liquidity is an important factor which contributes to whether a stock market follows a random walk.     

LONG MEMORY IN SOUTHERN AFRICAN STOCK MARKETS

The paper examines long memory in equity returns and volatility for stock markets in Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe using the ARFIMA‐FIGARCH model in order to assess the efficiency of these markets in processing information. The findings are diverse. Significant long memory is demonstrated in the equity returns of Botswana; while, in South Africa this result is not statistically different from zero. For Zimbabwe returns are characterised by an anti‐persistent process. Furthermore, all the markets investigated provide evidence of long memory in volatility with the exception of Botswana where there is no evidence of volatility persistence and hence the return from taking risk in this market cannot be predicted on the basis of previous values.     

Is Violation of the Random Walk Assumption an Exception or a Rule in Capital Markets?

Both the efficient market hypothesis and modern portfolio theory rest on the assumptions of the Gaussian probability distribution and independence of consecutive returns. This paper provides a brief excursion into the history of capital market research. A measure of long-range dependence (Hurst exponent) was applied to daily returns of selected stock indices and individual firms. The Hurst exponent was estimated using rescaled range analysis. The estimates are based on an unusually large sample of empirical-time series from capital markets. This method distinguishes whether the data-generating process follows random walk or exhibits antipersistent or persistent behavior. Both the efficient market hypothesis and modern portfolio theory assume that the data-generating process has no memory, i.e. follows Brownian motion. The random walk process is characterized by a Hurst exponent value of 0.5. Values greater than 0.5 and less than 1 indicate a persistence of local trends. Values between 0 and 0.5 indicate a process that reverts to the mean more often than a random process (mean-reverting process). The results indicated that the series of daily returns exhibit predominantly persistent or antipersistent behavior. Therefore, Brownian motion cannot be perceived as the norm for describing stock market behavior. These findings challenge the assumption of a random walk in stock prices, valuation models and assessment of risk.

     

Changes in the socialist countries: Contents and prospects

Abstract

This paper examines volatility transmission and conditional correlations behaviour between the US and the Asian stock markets considering the effect of the Global Financial crisis. One Asian mature market and 10 emerging markets are included in the sample. To carry out the analysis, we use a multivariate asymmetric GARCH model. Results show that there exists volatility transmission between the US and the Asian markets. Moreover, it is found that, after the crisis, volatility transmission patterns have barely changed. Finally, results suggest that the lower the country‘s level of development, the lower the correlation with the USA.     

Global Financial Crises and Time‐Varying Volatility Comovement in World Equity Markets

This paper studies volatility comovement in world equity markets between 1994 and 2008. Global volatility factors are extracted from a panel of monthly volatility proxies relating to 25 developed and 20 emerging stock markets. A dynamic factor model (FM) is estimated using two‐year rolling‐window regressions. The FM's time‐varying variance shares of global factors map variations in volatility comovement over time and across countries. The results indicate that global volatility linkages are significantly stronger during financial crisis periods in Asia (1997‐1998), Brazil (1999), Russia (1998) and the United States (2000, 2007‐2008). Emerging markets are weakly synchronised with world volatility in comparison with developed markets. In particular, emerging market comovement is significantly lower than developed market comovement during the Asian and US sub‐prime crises. This suggests a degree of decoupling of emerging markets from the global drivers of volatility during these periods.     

Seeking a Better Portfolio with Industry Recommendations*

This paper provides novel evidence that investors can build a better performing portfolio by exploiting industry level consensus recommendations. A minimum variance portfolio, combined with consensus recommendations, yields a higher Sharpe ratio and certainty equivalent returns. A minimum variance portfolio with no short-selling constraint consistently outperforms an equally weighted portfolio when exploiting consensus recommendations, which is an innovation compared to the existing literature. Our results suggest that sell-side analysts and brokers provide valuable information in the financial market and we benefit from incorporating the information in the portfolio optimisation.     

DETERMINANTS OF FOREIGN INSTITUTIONAL INVESTMENT IN INDIA: THE ROLE OF RETURN,RISK, AND INFLATION

The present study examines the determinants of foreign institutional investments (FII) in India, which by January 2003 almost exceeded U.S. $12 billion. Given the huge volume of these flows and their impact on the other domestic financial markets, understanding the behavior of the flows becomes very important, especially at a time of liberalizing the capital account. By using monthly data, we found that FII inflow depends on stock market returns, inflation rates (both domestic and foreign), and ex‐ante risk. In terms of magnitude, the impact of stock market returns and the ex‐ante risk turned out to be the major determinants of FII inflow. Unlike some of the other investigations of this topic, our study has not found any causative link running from FII inflow to stock returns. Stabilizing stock market volatility and minimizing the ex‐ante risk would help to attract more FII, an inflow of which has a positive impact on the real economy.     

Efficiency,Cointegration and Contagion in Equity Markets: Evidence from China,Japan and South Korea*

This paper empirically examines whether three East Asian stock markets, namely, those of China, Japan and South Korea, are individually and/or jointly efficient, and whether contagion exists between the cointegrated markets. While individual market efficiency is examined through testing for the random walk hypothesis, joint market efficiency is examined through testing for cointegration and contagion. The present study finds that the hypothesis of individual market efficiency is strongly rejected for the Chinese stock market, but not for the Japanese and the South Korean stock markets. However, when testing for cointegration, market efficiency is strongly rejected for all these markets. We take a simple case of contagion and find that although there is a long‐term relationship among the three markets, the contagion hypothesis cannot be rejected only between Japanese and South Korean stock markets, indicating short‐run portfolio diversification benefits from these two markets.     

Does International Diversification Really Diversify Risks?

This paper demonstrates that large adverse shocks are more highly correlated with one another than positive shocks across national stock markets of industrialized economies. This finding is robust if we allow for an ARCH process or if we exclude the data of October 1987. It is shown that the negative skewness of the world market portfolio is primarily responsible for such time-varying correlations of national stock markets. We propose to model the world market portfolio return by using the extended QGARCH model of J. Y. Campbell and L. Hentschel (1992, J. Finan. Econ.31, 281–318). The finding suggests that the U.S. investors' benefit from international portfolio diversification could be far more limited than is commonly thought. J. Japan. Int. Econ., March 2002, 16(1) pp. 109–134. Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University, Kunitachi-city, Tokyo 186–8603, Japan; and Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan. © 2002 Elsevier Science (USA).Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: F30, G11, G15.     

Volatility and Volume in Chinese Stock Markets

The fact that stock market returns in Europe and the USA are characterised by conditional heteroscedasticity is by now well documented in a large literature. We address the question of whether the same is true of the four Chinese stock markets (Shanghai and Shenzhen A and B) over the period from 25 November 1994 to 27 April 2001. Using daily index data, we make two departures from the standard GARCH(1,1) model. First, we use exponential GARCH (EGARCH) to allow for asymmetry in the volatility, which may be present as a result of leverage effects. Second, we respond to evidence of two-way causality between volume and return (and return volatility) by introducing a simultaneous equation model of the relationship. The results of estimating the model indicate that asymmetry does not seem to be present to a significant degree, possibly as a result of lack of information or concern among Chinese investors. We find that volume appears to play a significant part in determining index volatility, which may reflect information arrival effects or may alternatively result from the direct impact of trading on volatility. At the same time, we also find that both the level of returns and their conditional variance have an impact on trade volume, probably because positive (negative) returns tend to attract (deter) investors into the markets.     

Does Terrorism Affect the Stock‐Bond Covariance? Evidence from European Countries

Using daily stock and bond returns data from four European countries—France, Germany, Spain, and Great Britain—that have been the victims of significant terrorist activity, this study addresses the issue of whether transnational and/or domestic terrorist attacks have affected in any significant manner the time‐varying stock–bond covariance, their returns, and their variances. Stock and bond markets can be influenced and determined not only by the usual array of macroeconomic factors but also by security shocks, such as a terrorist incident, that have the potential to affect investors' sentiment and portfolio allocation decisions. The issue at hand is addressed using a VAR(p)‐GARCH(1,1)‐in‐mean model, and the results reported herein indicate that terrorist attacks trigger a flight‐to‐safety effect primarily in France and Germany and to a smaller degree in Great Britain and Spain.     

零杠杆上市公司的股票长期收益趋势研究

与国际发达的资本市场类似,我国资本市场也存在企业零（低）杠杆现象。基于1992-2014年沪深两市全部A股上市公司的财务报表数据及股票收益数据,文章使用事件研究法与日历时间组合法,实证检验了零（低）杠杆公司的财务特征及股票长期收益情况。研究表明,我国A股市场中的零（低）杠杆现象呈现扩大化及增长趋势,且零（低）杠杆公司具有规模小、上市年限短、市账比高、投资水平低及盈利性好等共同特征。研究也发现相较非零（低）杠杆公司,连续三（五）年零（低）杠杆公司具有显著的长期超额收益,说明持续的极端财务保守政策对于股票收益具有重要的影响作用。     

Can Fundamentals Explain Cross-Country Correlations of Asset Returns?

Previous studies show that existing correlations between national returns are higher than correlations between the national growth rates of fundamental variables. This paper examines the ability of intertemporal asset pricing models to explain cross-country correlations of national returns. We find that when capital markets are assumed to be fully integrated, a simple intertemporal general equilibrium model is able to explain the observed co-variability of domestic asset returns but generates too little variability in those returns. Results improve considerably if a less restrictive version is employed. In that setting, both domestic variability and cross-country co-variability of returns are consistent with capital market integration. JEL no. G12, G15, E44     

收益波动与随机冲击的非对称性影响：中国与美国股票市场的对比

通过讨论股票收益与随机;中击之间的关系,对中国股票市场和美国股票市场进行了对比研究。研究中使用了中国上海和深圳股票市场1990年12月31日至2005年12月30日的两市A股算术平均周指,以及美国股票市场1973年1月2日至2004年月12月30日的标准普尔500周指。在进行经验研究的过程中,分别使用了线性GARCH模型和GJR—GARCH模型计量股票收益的条件波动——即模型中的条件方差。研究发现,中国股票市场自1990年——1995年波动剧烈,之后波动趋于平缓,而美国股票市场在研究期间内收益波动一直处于一定范围内。同时还发现,美国股票市场的随机冲击对股票收益产生非对称性影响,即负冲击使股票收益产生的波动大于正冲击。而在中国股票市场却找不到相似的证据。鉴于对中国股票市场收益波动的研究结果,在剔除1996年以前的数据之后又进行了扩展研究,但是似然比率检验结果表明,正冲击对股票收益的影响还要略强于负冲击。     

后金融危机时期中国股市的国际地位——基于非线性视角的股市联动网络分析

后金融危机时期全球股市一体化程度不断提高,全面认识中国股市的国际地位对于揭示国际股市一体化联动中的传导机制,防范和应对国际金融风险冲击具有重要的理论意义和现实价值。文章应用非线性格兰杰因果检验方法和社会网络分析方法,对金砖国家和七国集团股市收益率和波动率的联动关系及其联动网络结构进行分析,揭示出中国在国际股市联动中的地位对传导关系的控制方式,定量分析出事件冲击下中国股市与国际股市之间的交互影响。研究发现：（1）国际股市收益率和波动率联动网络呈现出稳定的非线性联动关系网络结构,受其影响各国股市收益之间存在互惠性,而波动之间则存在传染性;（2）在收益率联动网络中,中国股市的作用和地位已与英国相当,远高于其他金砖国家,正逐渐由"从属地位"转向"中心地位";（3）在波动率联动网络中,中国股市是造成国际股市风险交叉影响的重要"桥梁"。综上而言,当前中国股市表现出"高风险低收益"的市场特征;（4）中国对国际股市的影响具有典型的"地缘特征",将网络中心国家股市的利好传递给地缘临近国家股市;（5）波动率联动网络中初始冲击强度较大的国家,往往是对中国股市持续大规模产生冲击的国家;（6）相比较国际股市调整波动冲击的时间而言,中国股市调整时间较短,这表明后金融危机时代中国致力于股市的一系列改革举措取得了显著成效。