China’s Growing Influence in Southeast Asia – Monetary Policy and Equity Markets

This study analyses the potential transmission of China’s monetary policy shocks to equity markets in Southeast Asia. Impulse response functions indicate that the impact of a monetary expansion in China is significant and positive for four of the five Southeast Asian equity markets. One explanation for this result is that monetary policy shocks in China lead to an increase in demand for goods and services in both China and abroad, which then shows up in the foreign equity market. The results in this paper provide evidence of China’s influence in Southeast Asia and its financial markets. The transmission effect is small and very short lived, but can be expected to increase if the current trends of a deepening economic integration between China and Southeast Asia and a maturing Chinese central bank continue.     

The nature and determinants of comovement between developed,emerging and frontier equity markets: Europe versus Asia‐Pacific

International investors are increasingly attracted towards emerging and frontier markets because of their potential to enhance diversification benefits of a global portfolio. This calls for a rigorous analysis of the nature and determinants of stock market comovement between developed, emerging, and frontier markets in Europe and Asia‐Pacific regions. The findings suggest that unlike their Asia‐Pacific counterparts, European developed, emerging, and frontier stock markets display a higher degree of comovement. Although Asia‐Pacific frontier markets provide good diversification opportunities, investors must be cautioned against their weak financial system. The volatility of returns, gross domestic product growth rate, and the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC) are the key determinants of stock market comovement in Europe. The mechanisms by which comovement in the Asia‐Pacific region is strengthened differ across markets. Comparative analysis of comovement and its determinants across different classes of equity markets and geographies is expected to provide valuable perspectives to global investors, portfolio managers, and policymakers.     

Markets versus institutions in developing countries: National attributes as determinants

While there is some discussion of national preferences for banking versus financial markets, there is little research on how national financing preferences are determined by legal, cultural, and other national characteristics. Using panel analysis on data for a recent eight-year period for sixteen emerging-economies, this paper documents that, in such countries, an increased predilection for equity markets is associated with increased prevention of corruption and countries being Asian. A decreased predilection for financing via equity markets is associated both with greater power of bank regulators and with more globalization and an English legal origin. One interpretation of our results suggests that while common law promotes both banking and financial markets, common law and societal openness act to promote banking more than markets in less developed environments. Our results have important public policy implications given that financial systems are still evolving in developing countries.     

Global Volatility and Forex Returns in East Asia*

During 2001–2010, increases in mature market volatility were associated with declines in forex returns for East Asian economies, consistent with an overall ‘flight to safety’ effect. Estimates from GARCH models suggest that a 10 percentage point increase in mature market equity volatility generated an exchange rate depreciation of up to 3/4 percent. This sensitivity rose during a more tranquil subsample for some countries, reflecting their greater integration with global financial markets. Long‐run forex volatility increased in Asian economies after 2008, reflecting the global reach of the financial crisis in mature markets. Unconditional standard deviations estimated from these models provide operational measures of ‘long‐term’ and ‘excess’ volatility in forex markets.     

The arrival of the Euro and its implications for Asia

The third stage of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) commenced on January 1, 1999 with the launch of the European single currency, the euro. The first round of participants comprises 11 of the 15 European Union (EU) nations, dubbed “Euroland.” The potential implications of EMU for Asia are immense. The euro's emergence as an international currency and its impact on Asia can be assessed in 3 different domains: (1) as a medium of exchange for Europe's trade with Asia; (2) as a store of value in stocks and bonds in world capital markets; and (3) as part of official foreign exchange reserves of Asian central banks. Our analysis suggests that there is potential for the euro to play a bigger role in EU-Asia trade links, which will be underpinned by the collective importance of Euroland as a much-enlarged trading and investment partner for Asia. However, in the short term at least, Asian equity markets are unlikely to benefit from significant inflows of capital from the EU as the former have been decimated by the region's financial crisis. As for Asian bond markets, rapid deterioration of sovereign ratings of countries in the region over the past 12 months would make it difficult for Asian companies to raise funds through euro-denominated debt instruments. As for official foreign exchange reserves, the bulk of Asian reserves is currently held in US dollar assets. Judging from Asian trade and debt figures, it seems unlikely that the euro would challenge the US dollar as a reserve currency any time in the near future. Nevertheless, in the longer term, the euro's introduction could make it easier for Asian central banks to diversify their reserves from the greenback to the euro. The internationalization of the euro is likely to happen only gradually, whether in terms of international trade denomination and settlement, denominating international financial assets, or as a reserve currency. Since the magnitude of shock that the single European currency would bring to the international monetary system is still unknown, only very tentative conclusions for the impact on Asian countries can be drawn at this point in time.     

Tapering talk: The impact of expectations of reduced Federal Reserve security purchases on emerging markets

In May 2013, Federal Reserve officials first began to talk of the possibility of tapering their security purchases. This “tapering talk” had a large negative impact on the exchange rate and financial markets in emerging markets. In this paper, we analyze who was hit and why. We find that countries with larger and more liquid markets and larger inflows of capital in prior years experienced more pressure on their exchange rate, foreign reserves, and equity prices. We interpret this as investors being able to rebalance their portfolios more easily when the target country has a large and liquid financial market.     

Financial Integration in East Asia: An Empirical Investigation

The central objective of this paper is to empirically evaluate the degree of linkages among East Asian equity and bond markets. Using data from the IMF’s Coordinated Portfolio Investment Survey (CPIS), we find that intra‐East Asian financial asset holdings of four East Asian countries – Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore – are larger than the levels predicted by the financial gravity model. However, our analysis suggests that this result is likely to be driven by intra‐regional trade linkages and reflect those linkages. Therefore, the salient implication for regional policymakers is that they should continue to promote intra‐regional financial integration. This paper also aims to analyse the impact of three different types of country‐specific risks – political, economic and financial risks – on investment from the four countries. This analysis yields a clear positive relationship between destination‐country risk, in particular political risk, and capital inflows.     

Private Equity Finance as a Growth Engine: What It Means for Emerging Markets

Entrepreneurship has long been considered crucial for economic development. An important element of entrepreneurship is the willingness and ability to mobilize private capital from both domestic and foreign sources. The private equity sector in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) illustrates the role that private capital can play in the development of emerging markets. Data on the employment generation and growth performance of private equity provide evidence that it is an important driver of economic growth globally. This paper draws on initial evidence from the MENA region to illustrate the sector's potential there and in emerging markets generally. It then recommends a new generation of reforms to fuel this growth engine. A survey of MENA’s private equity industry survey conducted for this paper assesses these developments and the sector's need for proactive reforms to support it. It also shows that international financial market interest in private equity finance does not seem to have abated with the recent market bust. The paper concludes by identifying priority areas for future policy and research. JEL Classification O160     

The Asian economy: current state of play and future prospects

The global financial crisis, the so-called great world recession and recovery have had a serious impact on the Asian and global economies. Together, they managed to engender significant transformation in the contours of both the Asian and global economies. For instance, Asian economies presently depend less on markets in the advanced industrial economies and, due to their enlarging markets, can and did make a substantive contribution to the global recovery. They spearheaded the economic recovery from the global financial crisis. The post-crisis Asian economy is the third pole of the global economy. Significantly, the emerging market economies of Asia did not magnify the external shock this time and performed more like the advanced industrial economies. After a robust recovery in 2010, growth became somewhat subdued in 2011. Projections show that economic performance in the region in 2012 will not be very different from that in 2011 (see WB [World Bank] 2012).     

Financial crises and contagion vulnerability of MENA stock markets

This paper examines contagion vulnerability and the international and regional financial linkages of the MENA stock markets. The degree of vulnerability of those markets to global and regional financial crises will have important bearings on the respective economies' growth rate, and on their ability to diversify international and regional portfolios. Granger causality tests and impulse response functions reveal that while the GCC equity markets still offer international investors portfolio diversification potentials, those markets are relatively less vulnerable to global and regional financial crises. Moreover, even though the remaining MENA stock markets of Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia have matured and are now financially integrated with the world stock markets, they tend to exhibit more vulnerability to regional and international financial crises. Their vulnerability to international financial crises is due, on the one hand, to weak regional integration, and to greater economic and financial integration with the more advanced economies on the other.     

The Changing Role of Financial Stress,Oil Price,and Gold Price in Financial Contagion among US and BRIC Markets

The objective of this paper is to explore the determining factors behind financial contagion between US and BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) equity markets. To this end, we investigate the effects of global macroeconomic factors on the time‐varying correlations among these markets obtained by asymmetric dynamic conditional correlation method. Utilizing quantile regression analysis, we examine the determinants of financial contagion at different levels of time‐varying correlations. The results of quantile regression analyses reveal that global financial crisis (GFC) (2008) leads to changes in the dependence structure between dynamic conditional correlations among equity markets and global macroeconomic factors, such as global financial stress, oil prices, and gold prices. Following the GFC, monetary, and fiscal policy changes in the BRIC markets and hence changing macroeconomic risks of these markets are conducive to these changes. Our findings also demonstrate the importance of cross‐market rebalancing channel for information transmission across US and BRIC markets.     

Investing in Asia's emerging equity markets

Asian equity markets have been hot for some time and they show no dramatic signs of cooling. The economies of the region have moved towards greater economic and financial integration while opening their capital markets to foreigners. Attracted by strong economies, credible reforms and further intentions of liberalization, global investors have made significant investments. However, the stability promised by a financially strong Japan is diminishing, and the region as a whole faces a variety of political and financial challenges.     

On the stability of domestic financial market linkages in the presence of time-varying volatility

We analyze the stability of domestic financial linkages between periods of calm and turbulent market conditions. Our model develops a simultaneous test of shift contagion and bi-directional pure contagion, which is applied to the equity and currency markets of a group of East Asian emerging economies. Our results show a great deal of instability in these markets with widespread evidence of pure contagion in both directions. There is less evidence of shift contagion with the transmission of common shocks unchanged between regimes for the majority of countries.     

An empirical analysis of the determinants of the P/E ratio in emerging markets

The determinants of the P/E ratio of emerging equity markets have not been examined, despite the growing importance of these markets. This study, modifying the methodology of prior studies, empirically evaluates the importance of economic growth and credit risk as the determinants of the P/E ratio of 21 emerging markets. Annual data for the period 1992–1999 are used with seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) techniques to obtain cross-section and pooled-data estimates. The multivariate results indicate the significance of growth and the univariate results, the significance of both growth and credit risk. These results are consistent with those of studies of developed equity markets. Tests for structural differences in the equations for the 8-year period are not significant. The findings are supportive of growth (earnings potential) as a determinant of cross-country variation of the P/E ratios in emerging markets. Growth-oriented policies are important for emerging equity markets (EEM) to function as profitable financial centers and a source of domestic capital.     

Religion, Ethics and Stock Trading: The Case of an Islamic Equities Market

Islamic banking, based on the prohibition of interest, is well established throughout the Muslim world. Attention has now turned towards applying Islamic principles in equity markets. The search for alternatives to Western style markets has been given added impetus in Muslim countries by the turmoil in Asian financial markets in 1997. Common stocks are a legitimate form of instrument in Islam, but many of the practices associated with stock trading are not. In this paper the instruments traded and the structure and practices of stock markets are examined from an Islamic perspective. Speculation is not acceptable in Islam and measures would have to be taken to control speculative trading. In addition short selling and margin trading are severely restricted. The use of stock index and equity futures and options are also unlikely to be acceptable within an Islamic market. Regulatory authorities in Muslim countries will therefore find a vast array of problems in attempting to structure a trading system that will be acceptable.     

Identifying bubbles in Latin American equity markets: Phillips-Perron-based tests and linkages

The identification of periods of price exuberance in equity markets is of great interest to policy makers and financial investors. In this paper, we identify financial bubble periods within the major equity markets in Latin America. We use the recently developed recursive Augmented Dickey-Fuller methods and propose similar recursive procedures based on Phillips-Perron. We find that conditional on bubbles in the S&P 500, there are strong links between bubble episodes across equity markets in Latin America. In addition, the financial bubble periods in Latin America begin earlier and last longer than bubble periods in the United States during the 2008 financial crisis. Price bubbles were identified prior to the establishment of the Integrated Latin American Market (MILA).     

Assessing the recent Asian economic crises: the role of virtuous and vicious cycles

This is an analysis of the causes of the late 1997 economic crises in the (until then) strong Asian economies. This paper shows that, although the two proximate causes of this crises seem to be stronger inter-national competition and poorly developed domestic financial systems in Asia, the underlying causes were related more to the virtuous economic and financial cycles in Asia that turned into vicious cycles in 1997. The key determinant of Asian recovery is the reduction in the importance of these positive feedback cycles by reforming Asian domestic financial systems so they are no longer characterized by low disclosure levels, high debt ratios, and high political influence in credit decisions.     

Foreign shocks and international cost of equity destabilization. Evidence from the MENA region

This paper investigates whether foreign financial shocks can destabilize the cost of equity in emerging markets. After a theoretical discussion, we develop annual metrics for the international cost of equity, financial integration, spillovers and shift-contagion vulnerability in a sample of 535 Middle East and North African firms from Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and Jordan over the 1998–2011 period. We then analyze the impact of foreign shocks on the international cost of equity, using a set of SGMM and PVAR models. Our results indicate that external shocks can increase the cost of equity in mature emerging markets.     

Further evidence on Asian stock return behavior

This paper examines the relationship between expected stock returns and size, and market-to-book ratio in five Asian emerging markets: India, Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan and Thailand. Overall, we find a strong size effect in all markets and a significant market-to-book effect in Korea, Malaysia and Thailand. When the tests allow for both variables, the negative relationship between size and average return is less robust; the inclusion of market-to-book equity seems to absorb the role of size in Asian stock returns. Our finding for the Asian market applies to the post-1984 period, thus questioning the assertion of Black [J. Portfolio Manage. 20 (1993) 8] and MacKinlay (1995) that “the value premium is sample-specific”. Although small firms have—to a certain extent—higher average returns than large firms in Asian markets, the market-to-book variable seems to have a consistently stronger role in average returns and would suggest that value stocks have higher average returns than growth stocks. Thus, the higher average return on value stocks in the Asian emerging markets can be considered as a local manifestation of a global phenomenon.     

Interdependence of international equity variances: Evidence from East Asian markets

This paper investigates the interdependence of volatility in six East Asian markets. We first model the returns in a VAR-BEKK framework to obtain the conditional variances, and then apply the vector-autoregressive model (VAR) to the six-market variances. The results of VAR estimation show that the interdependence of equity market conditional variances is high. The Japanese market, while being the most exogenous and the least susceptible to volatility stimuli from other markets, is the most influential in transmitting volatility to the other East Asian markets.