Are the East Asian markets integrated? Evidence from the ICAPM

We test a conditional international asset pricing model with both world market and domestic risk included as independent pricing factors for five East Asian markets, the US and World markets. We model second moments and risk exposures using a bi-diagonal multivariate GARCH(1,1) process. We document that this novel GARCH specification provides a significantly better fit of the return process than a standard diagonal specification. Although exposure to world market risk carries a significant premium across all markets, we find little support for the hypothesis that exposure to residual country risk is rewarded. However, residual country returns are significantly related to exchange rate changes. Hence, we find surprisingly little evidence of market segmentation in East Asia over the period 1985–1998.     

International asset pricing with time-varying risk premia

Recent empirical evidence that forward exchange rates are biased predictors of future spot rates can also be interpreted as evidence against the hypothesis of a constant risk premium. Consequently, reconciliation of this evidence with efficient international capital markets requires the existence of time-varying risk premia. This paper modifies Kouri's (1977) asset pricing model to allow time-varying exected returns on assets, eliminates the assumption of a risk-free real asset and derives the characteristics of the risk premia in the forward market as well as the equilibrium yield relationships among the equities and riskless nominal bonds of all countries.     

Market integration and contagion: Evidence from Asian emerging stock and foreign exchange markets

This paper examines whether Asian emerging stock markets (India, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan, and Thailand) have become integrated into world capital markets since their official liberalization dates by estimating and testing a dynamic integrated international capital asset pricing model (ICAPM) in the absence of purchasing power parity (PPP) using an asymmetric multivariate GARCH(1,1)-in-Mean approach. Also examined in this paper is whether there are pure contagion effects between stock and foreign exchange markets for each Asian country during the 1997 Asian crisis. The empirical results show that first, both currency and world market risks are priced and time-varying, suggesting that an international asset pricing model under PPP and constant price of risk might give rise to model misspecification. Second, the stock markets for India, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, and Thailand were segmented from the world capital markets before their liberalization dates, but all six markets have become fully integrated since then. Third, the market liberalization has reduced the cost of capital and price volatility for most of the countries. Finally, as for the contagion effects, strong positive impact of return shocks originating from the domestic stock market to its foreign exchange market during the crisis is found. This dynamic relationship between stock market and foreign exchange market is consistent with stock-oriented exchange rate models.     

Trade liberalization through asset markets

Political-economy expositions of trade policy have traditionally described asset or factor ownership as not subject to change. Asset markets, however, allow individuals to change the composition of income sources. We consider an economy with stochastic productivity to show how the equilibrium composition of asset portfolios influences individual attitudes toward free trade. The model links financial market completeness and trade liberalization in the second half of the 20th century and provides a contributing answer to why governments in poorer countries without well-developed financial markets have failed to liberalize trade.     

Exchange rate regimes, globalisation, and the cost of capital in emerging markets

This paper presents a multifactor asset pricing model for currency, bond, and stock returns for ten emerging markets to investigate the effect of the exchange rate regime on the cost of capital and the integration of emerging financial markets. Our results suggest that a fixed exchange rate regime system can help reduce the cost of capital in emerging markets by reducing the currency risk premia demanded by foreign investors.     

Global excess liquidity and asset prices in emerging countries: A PVAR approach

The overly accommodating monetary policy is often accused of creating surplus liquidity and bubbles on the asset markets. In particular, it could have contributed to strong capital inflows in emerging countries, which may have had a significant impact on financial stability in these countries, affecting domestic financing conditions and creating a risk of upward pressures on asset prices. We focus in this paper on the impact of global excess liquidity on goods and asset prices for a set of emerging market countries by estimating a panel VAR model. We define first global liquidity and highlight situations of excess liquidity. We then find that excess liquidity at global level has spillover effects on output and price levels in emerging countries. The impact on real estate, commodity and share prices in emerging countries is less clear.     

Correlation risk and international portfolio choice

Variance-covariance risk of the exchange rate is highly relevant for international investors. This paper addresses optimal asset allocation with stochastic variances and covariances in a Wishart Affine Stochastic Correlation (WASC) model in incomplete and complete markets. We show that the (hedging) demand for exchange rate variance-covariance risk can differ significantly between international investors. Local correlations with the exchange rate can affect the utilities of international investors differently while the impact of correlations between stocks can be symmetric. Depending on the current local exchange rate correlations domestic investors can benefit more or less than foreign investors from international trading.     

Segmented asset markets and optimal exchange rate regimes

This paper revisits the issue of the optimal exchange rate regime in a flexible price environment. The key innovation is that we analyze this question in the context of environments where only a fraction of agents participate in asset market transactions (i.e., asset markets are segmented). Under this friction alternative exchange rate regimes have different implications for real allocations in the economy. In the context of this environment we show that flexible exchange rates are optimal under monetary shocks and fixed exchange rates are optimal under real shocks.     

Turnover and return in global stock markets

I study how growth affects liquidity of global stock exchanges and how liquidity determines cross-sectional returns on those stock exchange index portfolios. I measure portfolio liquidity by turnover ratio computed as value of shares traded over the market capitalization. I obtain data from FIBV, an association of global stock exchanges. In a multiple regression model for turnover ratio, I find age, size, type of exchange, competition for order flow, and growth rate to be significant determinants of portfolio liquidity; however, exchange- and time-specific effects are more appropriate for modeling portfolio liquidity. The time effects yield to three distinct regimes, while the exchange-specific effects are surrogates for the legal systems, English common law, and Civil laws of the countries. I estimate the parameters of a multiple regression model in a two-stage GLS framework in which index return is a function of turnover. The GLS method is preferable since a turnover ratio may have a non-stationary, random component. The significant determinants of index return are turnover and volatility, although some of the volatility effect may be a spillover from a January effect. Investors expect higher return from high turnover markets. However, the positive turnover expected return relation is true only in emerging markets; in developed markets expected return is a function of volatility. This result confirms existing empirical evidence that high turnover stock portfolios generate superior returns and further the sources and pricing of risk in emerging and developed markets are different.     

China's segmented stock market: An application of the conditional international capital asset pricing model

China's segmented stock market provides an opportunity to study conditional international asset pricing from multiple viewpoints—domestic and foreign. We use the multivariate GARCH-M framework of De Santis and Gérard [De Santis, G., and Gérard, B., 1998. How big is the premium for currency risk? Journal of Financial Economics 49, pp. 375–412.], but add conditional local specific risk and find global, local, and currency risk to be priced and time-varying in Chinese markets, suggesting mild segmentation for developing country markets. The time-varying price of currency risk indicates that the strict currency restrictions in China do not sufficiently reduce currency risk to stabilize the price of currency risk. We also find that the price of local risk in the Chinese A stock market is non-time-varying relative to the developed market, but time-varying relative to the emerging market. This finding implies that the Chinese A stock market is more comparable to a developed market than an emerging market. However, results on Chinese B shares show the opposite relationship: from a foreign investor's perspective, Chinese B shares are better categorized as being emerging than developed. This is further supported by an Engle–Granger cointegration test.     

The welfare effect of international asset market integration under nominal rigidities

This paper assesses the impact of integrating international asset markets when segmented markets are not the only distortion. Using a two-country general equilibrium model with nominal rigidities and monetary shocks, we show that integration is not universally beneficial. Instead, the welfare impact depends on the degree to which exchange rate fluctuations are passed through to consumer prices. While the integration is welfare neutral in the polar cases of complete or zero pass-through, this is not the case when pass-through is partial. When shocks are equally volatile in both countries, integration can be detrimental or beneficial depending on the degree of pass-through. When shocks are more volatile in one country, it benefits from integration compared with the more stable country.     

Twin dollarization and exchange rate policy

This paper develops a small open economy general equilibrium model with nominal rigidities to study twin dollarization in East Asian economies, a phenomenon where firms borrow in US dollars and also set export prices in US dollars. In this model, we endogenize both the currency of liability denomination and the currency of export pricing. We show that a key factor that affects firms' dollarization decisions is exchange rate policy. Twin dollarization is an optimal strategy for all firms when exchange rate flexibility is limited, which implies that a fixed exchange rate regime may lead to an equilibrium with twin dollarization. Furthermore, we find that twin dollarization can reduce the welfare loss caused by the fixed exchange rate regime, as it helps to cushion the economy against domestic nominal risk.     

The pricing of foreign currency options under jump‐diffusion processes

In this article, the authors derive explicit formulas for European foreign exchange (FX) call and put option values when the exchange rate dynamics are governed by jump‐diffusion processes. The authors use a simple general equilibrium international asset pricing model with continuous trading and frictionless international capital markets. The domestic and foreign price level are introduced as state variables that contain jumps caused by monetary shocks and catastrophic events such as 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina. The domestic and foreign interest rates are stochastic and endogenously determined in the model and are shown to be critically affected by the jump risk of the foreign exchange. The model shows that the behavior of FX options is affected through the impact of state variables and parameters on the nominal interest rates. The model contrasts with those of M. Garman and S. Kohlhagen (1983) and O. Grabbe (1983), whose models have exogenously determined interest rates. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 27:669–695, 2007     

Domestic market context and international entrepreneurs’ relationship portfolios

The importance of relationships to international entrepreneurs’ internationalization is well recognized, but we still know little concerning how entrepreneurs find, develop and use different types of relationships for their internationalization. In a study based on international entrepreneurship and network theories, we examine how having or not having a domestic market affects the relationship portfolios developed by born global software entrepreneurs. We find it profoundly influences the personal relationship strength they seek in new international relationships, and their activeness towards developing new relationships that are embedded in foreign markets. Further, the analytical model we develop shows how and why the presence of a domestic market influences international entrepreneurs’ portfolios of relationships.     

Exchange Rate Effects on Domestic Prices in Bulgaria and Poland: Progress in Making Markets?

The economic liberalization which has occurred in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) over the past 15 years generally has involved establishing domestic markets and privatizing state‐owned firms, both with the intention of integrating the CEE economies into the global economy and allowing the benefits of competition to be realized. We explore how well this has been accomplished in two countries, Poland and Bulgaria, and the domestic conditions that contribute to its accomplishment. The sensitivity of domestic markets to international shocks, as reflected in exchange rate effects on domestic prices, may be viewed as an indicator of how integrated a country’s markets are into the global economy, and a proxy for competition in those markets. In explaining variation in exchange‐rate pass‐through, we examine the impact of market structure, economic liberalization and infrastructure as factors contributing to the development of competitive markets. We find that although integration into global markets can significantly increase market competitiveness, domestic factors also play a significant role.     

A Better Model? An Empirical Investigation of the Fama–French Five‐factor Model in Australia

Recently, Fama and French ( 2015a ) propose a five‐factor model by adding profitability and investment factors to their three‐factor model. This model outperforms the three‐factor model previously proposed by Fama and French ( 1993 ). Using an extensive sample over the 1982–2013 period, we investigate the performance of the five‐factor model in pricing Australian equities. We find that the five‐factor model is able to explain more asset pricing anomalies than a range of competing asset pricing models, which supports the superiority of the five‐factor model. We also find that despite the results documented by Fama and French ( 2015a ), the book‐to‐market factor retains its explanatory power in the presence of the investment and profitability factors. Our results are robust to alternative factor definitions and the formation of test assets. The study provides a strong out‐of‐sample test of the model, adding to the comparative evidence across international equity markets.     

Early warning indicators of asset price boom/bust cycles in emerging markets

We apply recently developed early warning indicator systems to a cross-section of emerging markets. We find that, with little or no modification, models designed to predict asset price booms/busts in advanced countries may be useful for emerging markets. The concept of monitoring a set of asset prices, real activity and financial indicators is generally found to be efficacious. We also find that, in addition to this set of variables, early warning indicator systems for emerging countries may be augmented with capital flow indicators.     

The relevance or otherwise of the central bank's balance sheet

This paper explores the impacts on an economy of a central bank changing the size and composition of its balance sheet. One of the ways in which such asset purchases could influence prices and demand is via portfolio balance effects. We develop and calibrate a simple OLG model in which risk-averse households hold money and bonds to insure against risk. Central bank asset purchases have the potential to affect households' choices by changing the composition and return of their asset portfolios. We find that the effect is weak, and that its size depends on how fiscal policy is conducted.That is not to say that the big expansion of central bank balance sheets in recent years has been ineffective. Our finding is rather that the portfolio balance channel evaluated in an environment of normally functioning (though nonetheless incomplete) asset markets is weak. That is not inconsistent with the evidence that large-scale asset purchases by central banks since 2008 have had significant effects, because those purchases were made when financial markets were, to varying extents, dysfunctional. Nonetheless our results are relevant to those purchases because they may be unwound in an environment where financial markets are no longer dysfunctional.     

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.     

Real and Financial Sector Interaction Under Liberalization in an Open Developing Economy

A short‐run model incorporates instantaneous portfolio equilibrium with macroeconomic flows to clarify the structure of real–financial sector interactions. If equity and foreign exchange markets are introduced in structuralist theories of asset markets in developing countries, the key result that a fall in money supply raises the rate of inflation now holds only under special conditions on partial derivatives. But there is a tendency for interest rates to rise and for fluctuations in asset prices. Fuller integration of asset markets moderates these fluctuations. Outcomes are stable in spite of the generalized complementarity distinguishing equity markets from loan markets. Expectations play a major role. Implications for policy are to link domestic interest rates to foreign, remove artificial barriers to market integration, and stimulate demand as well as supply.