International house prices and macroeconomic fluctuations

The paper investigates linkages between general macroeconomic conditions and the housing market for the G-7 area. Among the key results of the paper, we find that the US are an important source of global fluctuations not only for real activity, nominal variables and stock prices, but also for real housing prices. Secondly, albeit distinct driving forces for real activity and financial factors can be pointed out, sizeable global interactions are also evident. In particular, global supply-side shocks are an important determinant of G-7 house prices fluctuations. The linkage between real housing prices and macroeconomic developments is however bidirectional, with investment showing in general a stronger reaction than consumption and output to housing price shocks. Implications for the real effects of the sub-prime crisis are also explored.     

Resilience of Environmental and Social Stocks under Stress: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic

This paper examines whether environmental and social (ES) activities affect the resiliency of firms during the COVID-19 crisis. We study a sample of 330 firms operating in five developed countries: Canada, France, Japan, the UK and the US. Our analysis shows that US firms with a high ES ranking experienced a significantly lower stock price range volatility during the Covid stock market rundown of February-March 2020. Such findings also hold for Japanese firms but only later on after the introduction of government support. In terms of returns, compared to their peers with a low ES ranking, Japanese and UK stock prices with a high ES ranking suffered more during and after the market rundown. For other countries, we do not find significant differences in stock price behavior based on ES ratings. Our findings suggest that engaging with ES activities is not associated with a better or worse performance during crisis times, which has important implications for investors and managers.     

Common stochastic trends among Far East stock prices: Effects of the Asian financial crisis

This paper investigates empirically the change(s) in the long-run relationship(s) between the stock prices of eight Far East countries around the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98. Further tests are conducted to check the change in the influence of the Japanese and the US stock markets in the Far East Region before, during and after the crisis. Empirical investigation is conducted by means of rolling correlation coefficients, the Johansen multivariate cointegration method, causality tests and band spectrum regression. Results show significant long-run relationship(s) and linkage between the Far East markets before, during, and after the crisis. The most significant linkage and relationship are found during the crisis period. Results mostly indicate larger US influence in all periods but some evidence of increasing Japanese influence is also shown.     

Relationship between gold and stock markets during the global financial crisis: Evidence from nonlinear causality tests

This paper investigates the nonlinear dynamic co-movements between gold returns, stock market returns and stock market volatility during the recent global financial crisis for the UK (FTSE 100), the US (S&P 500) and Japan (Nikkei 225). Initially, the bivariate dynamic relationships between i) gold returns and stock market returns and ii) gold returns and stock market volatility are tested; both of these relationships are further investigated in the multivariate nonlinear settings by including changes in the three-month LIBOR rates. In this paper correlation integrals based on the bivariate model show significant evidence of nonlinear feedback effect among the variables during the financial crisis period for all the countries understudy. Very limited evidence of significant feedback is found during the pre-crisis period. Results from the multivariate tests including changes in the LIBOR rates provide results similar to the bivariate results. These results imply that gold may not perform well as a safe haven during the financial crisis period due to the bidirectional interdependence between gold returns and, stock returns as well as stock market volatility. However, gold may be used as a hedge against stock market returns and volatility in stable financial conditions.     

Global financial crisis and emerging stock market contagion: A volatility impulse response function approach

By employing the volatility impulse response (VIRF) approach, this paper presents a general framework for addressing the extent of contagion effects between the BRICSs’ and U.S. stock markets and how the BRICSs’ stock markets have been influenced in the context of the 2007–2009 global financial crisis. Our empirical results show during the period of 2007–2009 global financial crisis, there are significant contagion effects from the U.S. to the BRICSs’ stock markets. Yet, the degree of stock market reactions to such shocks differs from one market to another, depending on the level of integration with the international economy. Besides, the strengthened degree of stock market integration among the U.S. and BRICS has adverse effect such that if the 2007–2009 global financial crisis occurs today it may result in heavier impact on stock market volatility nowadays compared to the crisis-era.     

Oil price shocks and American depositary receipt stock returns

In this paper we examine the impact of oil price shocks on twelve countries American Depositary Receipt (ADR) returns using monthly data from 1999.01 to 2014.12. The results show that oil price shocks have a positive and statistically significant impact on ADR return in all twelve countries. These results are robust to the inclusion of other explanatory variables such as oil price volatility and the spillover of the United States stock market. Further analysis shows that this effect is stronger in the post financial crisis time period compared to the pre-financial crisis time period.     

Time-varying impacts of demand and supply oil shocks on correlations between crude oil prices and stock markets indices

This paper investigates the time-varying impacts of demand and supply oil shocks on correlations between changes in crude oil prices and stock markets returns. The findings, obtained by means of a DCC-GARCH from June 2006 to June 2016, indicate that demand shocks positively affected the correlations between crude oil prices and stock market returns from late 2007 to mid-2008, during the apex of the financial markets volatility; from early 2009 to mid-2013, during global economy recovery from the financial crisis; and after 2015, when uncertainties about the Chinese growth and the US economy upturning arose. The dynamic conditional correlation, obtained after the removal of demand shocks effects, presented an average value of 0.13 when all economy sectors were considered and of 0.03 when the energy sector returns were excluded from the stock index. These correlations, still positive on average, suggest that exogenous supply oil shocks had little impact on US mainly enterprises cash flows over the last 10 years. Exceptions are the periods from 2006 to financial crisis and from 2014 until April 2016, when significant and unpredicted changes in oil market happened, considerably affecting the value of the main US companies.     

International capital asset pricing: Evidence from options

We study the risk dynamics and pricing in international economies through a joint analysis of the time-series returns and option prices on three equity indexes underlying three economies: the S&P 500 Index of the United States, the FTSE 100 Index of the United Kingdom, and the Nikkei-225 Stock Average of Japan. We develop an international capital asset pricing model, under which the return on each equity index is decomposed into two orthogonal jump-diffusion components: a global component and a country-specific component. We apply separate stochastic time changes to the two components so that stochastic volatility can come from both global and country-specific risks. For each economy, we assign separate market prices for the two return risk components and the two volatility risk components. Under this specification, we obtain tractable option pricing solutions. Model estimation reveals several interesting insights. First, global and country-specific return and volatility risks show different dynamics. Global return movements contain a larger discontinuous component, and global return volatility is more persistent than the country-specific counterparts. Second, investors charge positive prices for global return risk and negative prices for volatility risk, suggesting that investors are willing to pay positive premiums to hedge against downside global return movements and upside volatility movements. Third, the three economies contain different risk profiles and also price risks differently. Japan contains the largest idiosyncratic risk component and smallest global risk component. Investors in the Japanese market also price more heavily against future volatility increases than against future market downfalls.     

The US financial crisis,market volatility,credit risk and stock returns in the Americas

We employ the multivariate DCC-GARCH model to identify contagion from the USA to the largest developed and emerging markets in the Americas during the US financial crisis. We analyze the dynamic conditional correlations between stock market returns, changes in the general economy’s credit risk represented by the TED spread, and changes in the US market volatility represented by the CBOE Volatility Index^® (VIX). Our sample includes daily closing prices from January 1, 2002 to December 31, 2015, for the USA and stock markets in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. We first identify that increases in VIX have a negative intertemporal and contemporaneous relationship with most of the stock returns, and these relationships increase significantly during the US financial crisis. We then find evidence of significant increases in contemporaneous conditional correlations between changes in the TED spread and stock returns. Increases in conditional correlations during the financial crisis are associated with financial contagion from the USA to the Americas. Our findings have policy implications and are of interest to practitioners since they illustrate that during periods of financial distress, US stock volatility and weakening credit market conditions could promote financial contagion to the Americas.

     

The Effects of Oil Price on the Korean Economy: A Global VAR Approach

This article empirically explores the effects of oil price on the Korean economy using a Global VAR model. First, we evaluate the average connectedness of oil price with the Korean domestic variables over the precrisis period. We then investigate the time-varying contribution of oil price to the Korean financial and real sectors during and after the global financial crisis through recursive estimation. It is found that the contribution of oil price becomes very large in the case of real exports, equity prices, and real output, but plays a much less prevalent role in the remaining cases. In the meantime, the time-varying contribution of oil price to the Korean economy has not changed during and after the global financial crisis. Interestingly, we find that the Korean economy is affected mostly by overseas financial conditions in the short-term but it becomes more susceptible to oil price fluctuations in the long run, suggesting that Korea’s reliance on energy imports leaves the economy exposed to volatility in energy prices.     

Oil prices implied volatility or direction: Which matters more to financial markets?

We examine the impact of oil price uncertainty on US stock returns by industry using the US Oil Fund options implied volatility OVX index and a GJR-GARCH model. We test the effect of the implied volatility of oil on a wide array of domestic industries’ returns using daily data from 2007 to 2016, controlling for a variety of variables such as aggregate market returns, market volatility, exchange rates, interest rates, and inflation expectations. Our main finding is that the implied volatility of oil prices has a consistent and statistically significant negative impact on nine out of the ten industries defined in the Fama and French (J Financ Econ 43:153–193, 1997) 10-industry classification. Oil prices, on the other hand, yield mixed results, with only three industries showing a positive and significant effect, and two industries exhibiting a negative and significant effect. These findings are an indication that the volatility of oil has now surpassed oil prices themselves in terms of influence on financial markets. Furthermore, we show that both oil prices and their volatility have a positive and significant effect on corporate bond credit spreads. Overall, our results indicate that oil price uncertainty increases the risk of future cash flows for goods and services, resulting in negative stock market returns and higher corporate bond credit spreads.     

国内外黄金市场价格间的联动关系稳定吗?——基于外部冲击视角的分析

在全球金融市场不断开放和融合的大背景下,黄金市场不但与外部市场频繁互动,其系统内部的联动关系也变得极为多元和复杂,黄金市场间的价格联动反映了信息和风险在不同市场间的传递过程。黄金价格通常会受到外部因素干扰而产生波动,但市场间的联动关系是否会因此而改变是值得重点关注的问题,黄金市场功能的有效性及稳固的市场关系是投资者利用全球黄金市场进行对冲和避险的先决条件,同时也关系到整个金融市场的稳定性。本文将研究重点聚焦于黄金市场内部,在研究中外各主要黄金市场间动态相关性和波动溢出效应的同时引入外部冲击以检验不同因素对黄金期货、现货市场间联动关系的影响从而探讨国内外黄金市场间价格联动的稳定性问题。结果表明:中国与全球主要黄金期货、现货市场间整体上保持了正相关关系,同时与各主要黄金市场间均存在显著的波动溢出效应。在一般市场条件下,外部冲击并没有显著改变中国与全球主要黄金期货、现货市场间的联动关系,表明黄金市场内部的价格联动具有较强的稳定性。     

Stock Volatility during the Recent Financial Crisis

This paper uses monthly returns from 1802 to 2010, daily returns from 1885 to 2010, and intraday returns from 1982 to 2010 in the USA to show how stock volatility has changed over time. It also uses various measures of volatility implied by option prices to infer what the market was expecting to happen in the months following the financial crisis in late 2008. This episode was associated with historically high levels of stock market volatility, particularly among financial sector stocks, but the market did not expect volatility to remain high for long and it did not. This is in sharp contrast to the prolonged periods of high volatility during the Great Depression. Similar analysis of stock volatility in the United Kingdom and Japan reinforces the notion that the volatility seen in the 2008 crisis was relatively short‐lived. While there is a link between stock volatility and real economic activity, such as unemployment rates, it can be misleading.     

Reactions of Japanese markets to changes in credit ratings by global and local agencies

We examine data from the mid-1980s to 2003 to investigate whether stock prices set on the Tokyo Stock Exchange for Japanese firms react more strongly to changes in credit ratings of global rating agencies than of local agencies. This offers a strong test of relative influence of the two groups of rating agencies. We hypothesize that global raters will have more influence, but given that the two global agencies, Moody’s and Standard and Poors, are headquartered in the United States, analysis of stocks of Japanese firms listed on US exchanges would confound the results to the extent there is a home bias for raters. We find that global agencies are more influential than the two major local raters, Japan Rating and Investment Information and Japan Credit Rating Agency, for rating downgrades. Thus for credit downgrades, global raters are more influential than local ones even in the local market. Consistent with previous research, we find that upgrades are benign events, and this holds true for global as well as local agencies.     

What drove the mid-2000s explosiveness in alternative energy stock prices? Evidence from U.S., European and global indices

Soaring prices in European alternative energy stocks and their subsequent tumble have attracted attention both from investors and academics. We extend recent research to an international setting and analyze whether the explosive price behavior of the mid-2000s was driven by rising crude oil prices and overall bullish market sentiment. Inflation-adjusted U.S. alternative energy stock prices do not exhibit signs of explosiveness. By contrast, we find strong evidence of explosive price behavior for European and global sector indices, even after controlling for a set of explanatory variables. Interestingly, while the sector indices plunged with the outbreak of the global financial crisis, idiosyncratic components continued to rise and did not start to decline until after world equity markets had already begun to recover in 2009. This finding suggests a substantial revaluation of alternative energy stock prices in light of intensifying sector competition and shrinking sales margins and casts some doubts on the existence of a speculative bubble. Nevertheless, we observe temporary episodes of explosiveness between 2005 and 2007 followed by rapid collapses, indicating the presence of some irrational exuberance among investors.     

The Impact of Oil Price Shocks on the Returns in China’s Stock Market

The main goal of this paper is to study the relationship between oil price shocks and mainland China’s stock market. From empirical study, we have found that the impact of oil price shocks on stock prices in China has been mixed. In contrast to the conventional wisdom that higher oil prices may cause lower stock prices, positive shocks to oil-market-specific demand resulted in both higher real oil prices and higher stock prices, which helps explain the boom of the Chinese stock market as oil prices were increasing in 2007. However, global oil demand and supply shocks had no significant effects.     

我国资产价格波动与通货膨胀关系的理论研究与实证分析

随着次贷危机引发全球性金融危机，学术界对于货币政策是否以及如何对资产价格做出反应的争议再起。本文根据协整分析技术、Granger因果检验方法和误差修正模型，利用1998—2008年中国的季度数据，对资产价格与通货膨胀之间的关系进行了实证研究。实证研究表明：第一，我国资产价格与通货膨胀之间确实存在长期的均衡关系，其中房价变动对通货膨胀的影响大于股价变动对通货膨胀的影响；第二，我国资产价格与通货膨胀之间存在着单向的因果关系，即股票价格与房价上涨是通货膨胀的原因。     

Economic evaluation of asymmetric and price range information in gold and general financial markets

Gold is widely perceived as a good diversification or safe haven tool for general financial markets, especially in market turmoil. To fully understand the potential, this study constructs an asymmetric multivariate range-based volatility model to investigate the dependence and volatility structures of gold, stock, and bond markets and further to compare the difference between the financial crisis and post-financial crisis periods. We find a striking explanatory ability to volatility structures provided by the price range information and significant evidence of asymmetric dependence across gold, stock, and bond markets. We implement an asset-allocation strategy incorporating asymmetric dependence and price range information to explore their economic importance. The out-of-sample results show that between 35 and 517 basis points and between 90 and 1111 basis points are earned annually when acknowledging asymmetric dependence and price range information, respectively. These economic benefits are inversely related to the level of investors’ risk aversion and are particularly significant in the period of the global financial crisis.     

Linkages between Indian and US financial markets: impact of global financial crisis and Eurozone debt crisis

This paper examines inter-linkages between Indian and US equity, foreign exchange and money markets using the vector autoregressive-multivariate GARCH-BEKK framework. We investigate the impact of global financial crisis (GFC) and Eurozone debt crisis (EZDC) on the conditional volatility and conditional correlation estimates derived from the multivariate GARCH model for Indian and US financial markets. Our results indicate that there is significant bidirectional causality-in-mean between the Indian stock market returns and the Rs./USD market returns, and significant unidirectional causality-in-mean from the US stock market returns to the Indian stock market returns. As regards volatility spillovers, we find that volatility in the Indian stock market rises in response to domestic as well as US financial market shocks but Indian financial market shocks do not impact the US markets. Further, impact of the recent crisis episodes on the covariance matrix is found to be significant. We find that volatility in the Indian and US financial markets significantly amplified during GFC. The conditional correlations across asset markets were significantly accentuated in the wake of the two crisis episodes. The impact of GFC on cross-market conditional correlations is higher for majority of the asset market pairs in comparison to the EZDC.     

Spillover of fear: Evidence from the stock markets of five developed countries

This study investigates the spillover effect in five leading stock markets (i.e., the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, and France). It estimates the spillover indices of these countries and finds that information transmission between these stock markets increases considerably after 1998. Germany and the United States are the main stock markets conveying information to other international markets. Germany primarily influences the French stock market, and the United States significantly influences many other stock markets. Results show that the US stock market shows three periods during which its net spillover effect exceeds zero: the period prior to 1997, the dot-com bubble from 2000 to 2002, and the subprime mortgage crisis and Lehman Brothers bankruptcy from 2007 to 2008. The fear index correlates significantly with the spillover of the US stock market into other markets. The spillover effect of the US stock market demonstrates asymmetry and the likelihood to spread positive fundamental information and non-fundamental information (e.g., fear).