Are Open Markets Good for Foreign Investors and Emerging Nations?

Although policymakers of emerging nations routinely brand foreign capital as "hot money" and hold it responsible for the ills of their economies, this article suggests that the experience of opening up their markets to overseas investors has been largely beneficial for the host countries. Based on their own recent study, the authors report that when emerging economies open their markets, the level of stock prices tends to rise without an associated increase in volatility, and more capital becomes available for domestic investment at a lower cost. The stock markets also appear to become more efficient, thus resulting in a better allocation of resources. Furthermore, the inflow of foreign capital does not lead to higher inflation or stronger currencies, nor does the volatility of inflation or exchange rates increase. If some countries experience large capital outflows with damaging consequences, the culprit is not foreign investors, but rather policymakers' futile attempt to defy market forces and the failure of their economies to put the capital to productive uses.
The authors' analysis also suggests that, when the recent turmoil in emerging markets is set in the context of a longer-run historical perspective, nothing appears to have changed that would materially alter the prospects for investing in emerging markets. The recent market volatility and currency crises in emerging nations are by no means extraordinary—indeed, the currencies of many developing countries fall routinely. What distinguishes the Mexican and Thai currency crises from such run-of-the-mill devaluations is that both governments resisted the inevitable until market forces brought about a crash. The recent emerging market currency crises should accordingly be viewed as more or less predictable "road bumps" that can be expected when the policymakers of emerging economies gradually—and grudgingly—relinquish their power to the markets.     

What slice of the pie? The corporate bond market boom in emerging economies

This paper studies the determinants of shifts in debt composition among emerging market non-financial corporates. We show that the determinants of bond market access in EMs vary with global cyclical conditions and across local and foreign currency markets. We find that the role for institutions and macro fundamentals in creating an enabling environment for markets increased during the post-crisis period for local currency markets. Foreign bank linkages additionally explain why local currency bond markets increasingly substituted for banks in channeling liquidity to EMs. In the case of foreign currency markets, in turn, global cyclical factors accounted for most of the variation. Furthermore, a country’s relative sensitivity to global factors appears to vary with the size of its foreign currency bond market rather than local fundamentals. Our results highlight the risk of capital flow reversal in those EMs that benefited from the upturn in the global financial cycle mostly due to the relative size of their bond markets rather than strong fundamentals.     

The Equity Market Risk Premium and the Valuation of Overseas Investments

There is little agreement among academics or practitioners about how to measure the size of the equity market risk premium, particularly when it relates to investments in emerging markets. Using monthly equity returns for 22 developed and 24 emerging markets covering the period 1976–2006, the authors find that developed capital markets have experienced significant increases in their degree of integration with the U.S. and world market indexes, while emerging markets remain at least partly segmented from those of the U.S. and the world. For countries that are reasonably well integrated into global capital markets, the authors suggest using the U.S.—based equity market risk premium. But when valuing investments in emerging markets, they recommend use of the Capital Asset Pricing Model adjusted for political risk and a measure of co‐movement between the foreign and U.S. stock markets. The authors also remind readers that the equity market risk premium is supposed to be a forward‐looking measure, and that the common practice of inferring the future from the past can be misleading, particularly in the case of rapidly developing emerging markets.     

Market Impact on financial market integration: Cross-quantilogram analysis of the global impact of the euro

We contribute to the literature by providing a more comprehensive understanding of the impact the euro has had on financial market integration with economies of different characteristics outside and within the European market via inclusion of market conditions influence on the level of financial integration. Our paper employs the recently developed cross-quantilogram (Han et al., 2016) approach to examine quantile dependence between the conditional stock return distributions of Germany and the UK with that of three common currency groups within EMU (Finland, France, and Italy), two global leading markets (the US and Japan), and two of the most promising emerging markets (China and India). We find three key results. First, both the EU membership and the common currency union affect the degree of financial market integration. Nevertheless, disentangling the effects of EU membership from the common currency shows that the common currency group has an additional impact on financial integration, as the degree of dependence is stronger in the common currency group than in the sovereign currency group and other groups. Second, there is a heterogeneous dependence structure, which is strongly observed for the UK and German stock returns with that of developed (the US and Japan) and emerging markets (India and China). Third, cross-quantile correlations change over time, especially in low and high quantiles, indicating that they are prone to jumps and discontinuities in the dependence structure. As far as we are aware, this is the first study in this field employing a cross-quantilogram method to examine the impact of different market conditions on the correlations, making our study a pioneer in the field of stock market integration.     

Flight-to-quality and correlation between currency and stock returns

We document that capital flows in and out of emerging or developed markets are sensitive to global equity market conditions. Capital tends to move out of emerging into developed countries in global down markets, leading to depreciation (appreciation) of emerging (developed) currencies. This generates a positive (negative) correlation between currency and equity in emerging (developed) markets which is amplified by the magnitude of the capital movement. We also verify that hedging currency risks may undo the natural hedge and increase the total return volatility under negative correlation.     

Why do closed-end country funds trade at enormous premiums during currency crises?

We investigate the response of US traded country fund premiums to currency crises in related foreign (local) markets. Our analysis includes 25 currency crises over the past decade involving 18 funds investing in 12 emerging markets, and 7 funds investing in 6 developed markets. We find that fund premiums and the volatility of the premiums increase dramatically in response to a currency crisis, both for emerging and developed markets funds, and that these effects dissipate slowly over time. Our results show that country fund shares and net asset values (NAVs) have differential risk exposures and that these differences are exacerbated during a crisis. While the NAV returns show sensitivity to changes in the local market index, share returns are sensitive to changes in both local and world market indices. Therefore, in response to a currency crisis, when local stock markets decrease in value, fund NAVs react more strongly than their share prices which have a strong global component. We also show that the high premiums observed during currency crises are not due to the reluctance of investors to trade and realize losses.     

GLOBALIZATION OF CAPITAL MARKETS AND THE ASIAN FINANCIAL CRISIS

This article has three basic aims: (1) to analyze the impact of the opening of their capital markets on the economies of host countries; (2) to investigate the causes of the Asian financial crisis; and (3) to evaluate the likely effects of the South Korean government's recent attempts to restructure its corporate sector. Although the recent Asian financial crisis has led some to question the merits of open capital markets and to call for regulatory restraints on capital flows across international borders, the scientific evidence suggests that the opening of stock markets to foreign investors has been largely beneficial for emerging economies. On average, stock market liberalization has been accompanied by increases in stock prices and reductions in stock return volatility, reductions in inflation, and reductions in the rate of currency depreciation. Much of the blame for the Asian currency crises is assigned to Asian policymakers' futile attempts to defy market forces by trying to maintain their currencies at artificially high levels. But a more fundamental cause of Asia's economic problems has been the widespread value destruction by Asian corporations, which has led to a lower value for the overall economy and weakened the banking sector. The government-directed banking systems and weak corporate governance structures (including managerial incentives to increase size and market share at the expense of shareholders) that characterize most Asian economies have resulted in systematic overinvestment, bloated payrolls, and sharp declines in corporate profitability. While applauding most of the Korean government's recent measures to reform the economy, the article expresses skepticism about the government-mandated restructuring of the chaebol known as the “big deal.” Rather than trying to direct the process of restructuring, Korean policymakers should limit their efforts to improving the market mechanism by increasing competition in the markets for capital, corporate control, and goods and services. The Korean market for corporate control transactions could be greatly improved by increasing the efficiency of bankruptcy proceedings and by allowing hostile takeovers by foreign as well as domestic investors. To increase the productivity of capital, Asian companies should seek to realign managerial with shareholder interests by tying compensation to measures of value creation like EVA.     

金融市场开放背景下境内外币市场的变化与挑

长期以来,境内外币市场流动性更多受到境内企业外币存贷款需求变化的影响,关注其变化就能对流动性做出较好预判。但随着我国金融市场的开放程度不断提升,资本及金融市场项目的进出逐渐成为了决定境内外币流动性状况的主要因素,境内外市场利差不断缩小,对于全球货币市场流动性及境内资产的对外吸引力研究已成为境内外币流动性管理者不得不重视的课题。     

Stock Market Valuation,Foreign Investment,and Cross-Country Arbitrage

This study investigates the role of stock market valuation and cross-country arbitrage in shaping foreign direct and indirect investments, contingent upon a country's stage of development. This paper is built upon the mispricing-driven foreign investment hypotheses developed by Baker, Foley, and Wurgler (2009). Interesting findings emerge when developed and emerging markets are considered separately. Empirical evidence indicates that the use of relatively cheap financial capital for foreign investment is prominent among developed countries, but not so in emerging markets. This is largely due to the extremely low level of foreign investment outflows in emerging markets and the inability of unsophisticated emerging market managers to successfully time the market. Further investigation shows that host-country stock market valuation is an important determinant of the mode of foreign investment; investors tend to choose indirect or portfolio investment, as opposed to direct investment, when the stock market is perceived to be undervalued. This is especially the case in emerging markets, where there is more room for misvaluation and potential arbitrage. These findings suggest that the unique institutional features of the markets involved play an important role in shaping foreign investment and cross-country arbitrage.     

欧元区主权债务危机对国际金融市场的影响及启示

欧元区主权债务危机爆发两年多来,全球股市纷纷下挫、走势低迷,外汇市场也随着债务危机的延伸而跌宕起伏。旷日持久的债务危机不仅对国际金融市场造成巨大冲击,加剧了国际资本流动的频繁无序,且已导致欧洲银行体系的信用风险加大和流动性紧张等问题。欧元区主权债务危机的爆发,提醒我们要全面审视中国的主权债务问题,尤其要加强对地方政府债务的监管,以防范债务危机的发生。     

Local risk factors in emerging markets: Are they separately priced?

We provide new evidence on the pricing of local risk factors in emerging stock markets. We investigate whether there is a significant local currency premium together with a domestic market risk premium in equity returns within a partial integration asset pricing model. Given previous evidence on currency risk, we conduct empirical tests in a conditional setting with time-varying prices of risk. Our main results support the hypothesis of a significant exchange risk premium related to the local currency risk. Exchange rate and domestic market risks are priced separately for our sample of seven emerging markets. The empirical evidence also suggests that although statistically significant, local currency risk is on average smaller than domestic market risk but it increases substantially during crises periods, when it can be almost as large as market risk. Disentangling these two factors is thus important in tests of international asset pricing for emerging markets.     

Emerging Stock Markets and International Asset Pricing

This article investigates whether emerging stock markets arenow part of the global financial market and characterizes returnbehavior in these markets. Tests of the conditional InternationalCapital Asset Pricing Model (ICAPM) reveal that eighteen ofthe twenty largest emerging markets were integrated with theworld market between December 1984 and December 1991, but thatmany of the same markets reject the model when data for 1977–84are used. These results suggest that large capital inflows fromindustrial economies, beginning in the late 1980s, caused pricesin emerging markets to reflect covariance risk with the worldportfolio, thus inducing their consistency with the ICAPM.     

Do foreigners facilitate information transmission in emerging markets?

Using the degree of accessibility of foreign investors to emerging stock markets, or investibility, as a proxy for the extent of foreign investments, we assess whether investibility has a significant influence on the diffusion of global market information across stocks in emerging markets. We show that greater investibility reduces price delay to global market information. We also find that returns of highly investible stocks lead those of noninvestible stocks because they incorporate global information more quickly. These results are consistent with the idea that financial liberalization in the form of greater investibility yields informationally more efficient stock prices in emerging markets.     

On emerging stock market contagion: The Baltic region

This study provides new evidence on emerging stock market contagion during the Global Financial crisis (GFC) and the Euro zone Sovereign Debt Crisis (ESDC). Focusing on the three emerging Baltic markets and developed European markets, proxied by the EUROSTOXX50 stock index, we explore asymmetric dynamic conditional correlation dynamics across stable and crisis periods. Empirical evidence indicates a diverse contagion pattern for the Baltic region across the two crises. Latvia and Lithuania were contagious during the GFC, while they were insulated from the adverse effects of the ESDC. On the other hand, Estonia decoupled from the negative consequences during the global turmoil period, but recoupled during the ESDC. The results could be attributed to financial and macroeconomic characteristics of the Baltic countries before and after the turmoil periods and the introduction time of the Euro as a national currency.     

Global financial shocks and foreign asset repatriation: Do local investors play a stabilizing role?

We study the dynamic response of gross capital flows in emerging market economies to different global financial shocks, using a panel vector-autoregressive (PVAR) approach. Our focus lies primarily on the potentially stabilizing role played by domestic investors in offsetting the response of foreign investors to adverse global shocks. We find that, while foreign investors tend to retrench from emerging markets in response to global risk aversion and monetary policy shocks, foreign asset repatriation by resident investors does not always follow suit. Local investors play a meaningful stabilizing role in the face of global risk aversion shocks, with sizeable asset repatriation largely offsetting the retrenchment of non-residents. In contrast, foreign investor retrenchment in response to global monetary policy shocks is not mirrored by asset repatriation. Finally, we find robust evidence that positive global real shocks tend to have a positive impact on net capital inflows to emerging markets. Our results shed light on the likely impact of the Fed's QE tapering on capital flows to emerging market economies.     

Global economic activity as an explicator of emerging market equity returns

This paper evaluates whether global economic activity, measured by the maritime index and commodity index, is a distinct common factor in explaining equity returns in emerging markets. We document two important features of global equity markets that show that emerging market equities are a segregated part of the global stock market. First, our results show that increases in global economic activity are associated with higher emerging market equity returns. Second, companies in developed markets that have a significant exposure in emerging markets have incremental exposure to commodity returns. By allocating more capital to emerging market equities, an investor increases portfolio exposure to changes in global economic activity.     

Market integration and currency risk in Asian emerging markets

Most of the Asian emerging stock markets started to liberalize their markets in 1990s. In this paper, I examine whether those markets have become integrated with world stock market since the 1990s by estimating and testing a dynamic version of international CAPM (ICAPM) in the absence of purchasing power parity (PPP) using a parsimonious multivariate GARCH-in-Mean (MGARCH-M) approach. I also investigate to what extent the liberalization process has affected the cost of capital and price volatility for each market. The empirical results show that Philippines was segmented from the world stock market before its liberalization date, but no evidence of market segmentation is found for the other five markets (India, Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Thailand) before their liberalization dates. However, all six markets have become integrated after opening up their markets to foreign investors. In addition, the estimated risk premia are lower after the liberalization, indicating that the liberalization process has reduced the cost of capital for their domestic firms. Moreover, there is no evidence of extra market volatility introduced by capital market liberalization, and on the contrary, the markets have become more stabilized through the liberalization process.     

What drives portfolio investments of German banks in emerging capital markets?

After decades of steady liberalization and financial market development, emerging capital markets experienced unparalleled capital inflows in the aftermath of the emerging markets crisis of the 1990s. This paper studies portfolio investment decisions of German banks in emerging capital markets from 2002 to 2007. The use of a dynamic time-series cross-section framework and the micro database External Position Report provided by Deutsche Bundesbank permit insights into the various determinants of portfolio investments in ECMs. For example, there is evidence that German banks take into account the various dimensions of financial market development in their portfolio investment decisions and anticipate the special risks inherent in emerging markets. Proxies for the overall development and efficiency of capital markets have the highest economic significance of all variables. The introduction of depositary receipts programs has a positive impact on stock market investment. Moreover, there is evidence that global risk aversion exerts a significant influence in times of financial turmoil.     

Global financial services and a global single currency

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the evolution of financial institutions in the context of increasingly volatile foreign exchange markets. The paper discusses the importance of the formation of a single currency in the US in the 19th century and the formation of the Euro in the 20th century for reducing volatility in foreign exchange markets that have assisted financial institutions’ international business expansion. The paper also considers some of the key assumptions of an optimal currency theorem such as labour mobility and argues that in the 21st century, more comprehensive financial market integration and a single global currency could emerge, provided that capital mobility and hence foreign capital flows continue meeting labour in the host countries for production rather than the other way round.     

The reaction of asset prices to macroeconomic announcements in new EU markets: Evidence from intraday data

We estimate the impact of macroeconomic news on composite stock returns in three emerging European Union financial markets (the Budapest BUX, Prague PX-50, and Warsaw WIG-20), using intraday data and macroeconomic announcements. Our contribution is twofold. We employ a larger set of macroeconomic data releases than used in previous studies and also use intraday data, an excess impact approach, and foreign news to provide more reliable inferences. Composite stock returns are computed based on 5-min intervals (ticks) and macroeconomic news are measured based on the deviations of the actual announcement values from their expectations. Overall, we find that all three new EU stock markets are subject to significant spillovers directly via the composite index returns from the EU, the U.S. and neighboring markets; Budapest exhibits the strongest spillover effect, followed by Warsaw and Prague. The Czech and Hungarian markets are also subject to spillovers indirectly through the transmission of macroeconomic news. The impact of EU-wide announcements is evidenced more in the case of Hungary, while the Czech market is more impacted by U.S. news. The Polish market is marginally affected by EU news. In addition, after decomposing pooled announcements, we show that the impact of multiple announcements is stronger than that of single news. Our results suggest that the impact of foreign macroeconomic announcements goes beyond the impact of the foreign stock markets on Central and Eastern European indices. We also discuss the implications of the findings for financial stability in the three emerging European markets.