Market fragility and international market crashes

We extend the Pukthuanthong and Roll (2009) measure of integration to provide an estimate of systemic risk within international equity markets. Our measure indicates an increasing likelihood of market crashes. The conditional probability of market crashes increases substantially following increases of our risk measure. High levels of our risk measure indicate the probability of a global crash is greater than the probability of a local crash. That is, conditional on high levels of systemic risk, the probability of a severe crash across multiple markets is larger than the probability of a crash within a smaller number of markets.     

Market Integration and Investment Barriers in Emerging Equity Markets

This article develops a return-based measure of market integrationfor nineteen emerging equity markets. It then examines the relationbetween that measure, other return characteristics, and broadlydefined investment barriers. Although the analysis is exploratory,some clear conclusions emerge. First, global factors accountfor a small fraction of the time variation in expected returnsin most markets, and global predictability has declined overtime Second, the emerging markets exhibit differing degreesof market integration with the U.S. market, and the differencesare not necessarily associated with direct barriers to investment.Third, the most important de facto barriers to global equity-marketintegration are poor credit ratings, high and variable inflation,exchange rate controls, the lack of a high-quality regulatoryand accounting framework, the lack of sufficient country fundsor cross-listed securities, and the limited size of some stockmarkets.     

Limited arbitrage between equity and credit markets

We document that short-horizon pricing discrepancies across firms' equity and credit markets are common and that an economically significant proportion of these are anomalous, indicating a lack of integration between the two markets. Proposing a statistical measure of market integration, we investigate whether equity–credit market integration is related to impediments to arbitrage. We find that time variation in integration across a firm's equity and credit markets is related to firm-specific impediments to arbitrage such as liquidity in equity and credit markets and idiosyncratic risk. Our evidence provides a potential resolution to the puzzle of why Merton model hedge ratios match empirically observed stock-bond elasticities (Schaefer and Strebulaev, 2008) and yet the model is limited in its ability to explain the integration between equity and credit markets (Collin-Dufresne, Goldstein, and Martin, 2001).     

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.     

The world price of jump and volatility risk

We study international integration of markets for jump and volatility risk, using index option data for the main global markets. To explain the cross-section of expected option returns we focus on return-based multi-factor models. For each market separately, we provide evidence that volatility and jump risk are priced risk factors. There is little evidence, however, of global unconditional pricing of these risks. We show that UK and US option markets have become increasingly interrelated, and using conditional pricing models generates some evidence of international pricing. Finally, the benefits of diversifying jump and volatility risk internationally are substantial, but declining.     

Multivariate dependence of implied volatilities from equity options as measure of systemic risk

This paper presents a methodology to examine the multivariate tail dependence of the implied volatility of equity options as an early warning indicator of systemic risk within the financial sector. Using non-parametric methods of estimating changes in the dependence structure in response to common shocks affecting individual risk profiles, possible linkages during periods of stress are quantifiable while recognizing that large shocks are transmitted across financial markets differently than small shocks. Before and during the initial phase of the financial crisis, we find that systemic risk increased globally as early as February 2007 — months before the unraveling of the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis and long before the collapse of Lehman Brothers. The average (multivariate) dependence among a global sample of banks and insurance companies increased by almost 30% while joint tail risk declined by about the same order of magnitude, indicating that co-movements of large changes in equity volatility were more likely to occur and responses to extreme shocks became more differentiated as distress escalated. The key policy consideration flowing from our analysis is that complementary measures of joint tail risk at high data frequency are essential to the robust measurement of systemic risk, which could enhance market-based early warning mechanisms as part of macroprudential surveillance.     

Implied volatility sentiment: a tale of two tails

We propose a sentiment measure jointly derived from out-of-the-money index puts and single stock calls: implied volatility (IV-) sentiment. In contrast to implied correlations, our measure uses information from the tails of the risk-neutral densities from these two markets rather than across their entire moneyness structures. We find that IV-sentiment measure adds value over and above traditional factors in predicting the equity risk premium out-of-sample. Forecasting results are superior when constrained ensemble models are used vis-à-vis unregularized machine learning techniques. In a mean-reversion strategy, our IV-sentiment measure delivers economically significant results, with limited exposure to a set of cross-sectional equity factors, including Fama and French's five factors, the momentum factor and the low-volatility factor, and seems valuable in preventing momentum crashes. Our novel measure reflects overweight of tail events, which we interpret as a behavioral bias. However, we cannot rule out a risk-compensation rationale.     

Real effects of financial market integration: does lower home bias lead to welfare benefits?

This paper proposes equity home bias as a proxy for financial integration in the ongoing empirical debate on the impact of financial integration on economic growth. In integrated markets, investors are expected to take full advantage of the potential for international diversification. The extent of equity home bias (i.e. overinvesting in domestic stocks and foregoing gains from international diversification) provides a relevant quantity-based measure of financial integration. Using different techniques to compute home bias, this paper investigates whether countries with lower home bias experience faster economic growth. Additionally, the analysis extends to the link between (decreasing) home bias and international risk sharing and income inequality. The results suggest that financial integration, proxied by the decreasing equity home bias, is positively associated with economic growth and international risk sharing. At the same time, it appears that higher financial integration pairs with higher income inequality.     

A return-based approach to identify home bias of European equity funds

This paper introduces a return-based approach to studying a possible home bias of European equity funds by estimating their exposures to their domestic markets. We first confirm the robustness of our approach using simulated portfolios with different proportions of domestic and foreign stocks. The empirical analysis examines equity funds domiciled in 15 European countries that invest in European stocks. We examine individual funds as well as portfolios comprising funds that are all domiciled in a particular country. Our findings reveal that the portfolios of four domiciles show a significant home bias. Moreover, we observe that in seven domiciles more than a quarter of the individual funds are home-biased. These results are robust when controlling for fund-specific benchmarks or for the average country exposures of all funds in our final sample. Finally, a home bias of individual funds is not related to superior performance, but actually results in higher investment risk consistent with underdiversification.     

Measuring systemic risk contribution of global stock markets: A dynamic tail risk network approach

Measuring the systemic risk contribution (SRC) of country-level stock markets helps understand the rise of extreme risks in the worldwide stock system to prevent potential financial crises. This paper proposes a novel SRC measurement based on quantifying tail risk propagation's domino effect using ΔCoVaR and the cascading failure network model. While ΔCoVaR captures the tail dependency structure among stock markets, the cascading failure network model captures the nonlinear dynamic characteristics of tail risk contagion to mimic tail risk propagation. As an illustration, we analyze 73 markets' SRCs using a daily closing price dataset from 1990.12.19 to 2020.9.8. The validity test demonstrates that our method outperforms seven classic methods as it helps early warning global financial crises and correlates to many systemic risk determinants, e.g., the market liquidity, leverage, inflation, and fluctuation. The empirical results identify that Southeast European markets have higher SRCs with time-varying and momentum features corresponding to significant financial crisis events. Besides, it needs attention that South American and African markets have displayed increasing risk contributions since 2018. Overall, our results highlight that considering tail risk contagion's dynamic characteristics helps avoid underestimating SRC and supplement a “too cascading impactive to fail” perspective to improve financial crisis prevention.     

Measuring equity market integration using uncorrelated information flows: Tokyo,London and New York

Equity markets do not pass all overnight information into prices instantly at the opening of trade. We adjust open-to-close return series for non-instantaneous information absorption and then use adjusted series to measure integration among three major equity markets. Because the adjusted daytime return series are uncorrelated, we can accurately measure the size, and identify the sources, of transmissions. Overnight news, as represented by foreign open-to-close returns, explains 13% of opening price variation (close-to-open returns) in New York, 14% in Tokyo and 30% in London. For New York and Tokyo, the largest influences come from the market that trades immediately prior (London and New York respectively) whereas opening price variation in London is linked closer with New York than Tokyo. Foreign volatility spillovers are also significant, and subject to asymmetric effects.     

The cost of equity of internet stocks: a downside risk approach

Beta as a measure of risk has been under fire for many years. Although practitioners still widely use the CAPM to estimate the cost of equity of companies, they are aware of its problems and are looking for alternatives. A possible alternative is to estimate the cost of equity based on the semideviation, a well-known and intuitively plausible measure of downside risk. Complementing evidence reported elsewhere about the ability of the semideviation to explain the cross-section of returns in emerging markets and that of industries in emerging markets, this article reports results showing that the semideviation also explains the cross-section of Internet stock returns.     

The risk adjusted uncovered equity parity

This paper explores the risk adjusted uncovered equity parity model to investigate a degree of market integration for four Asian emerging markets relative to the U.S., Japan and the U.K. from January 1994 to July 2008. The uncovered equity parity is revised to take into account of market risk in a framework of a portfolio rebalancing model. Evidence was found to strongly support our hypotheses; Market risk is significant in international capital flows between the Asian emerging markets and the developed economies, and it can help explain the failure of a traditional uncovered equity (or interest) parity model. The relationship between returns and an appreciation of the exchange rate are divided between the Asian emerging markets and the developed economies, depending on the direction of capital flows.     

Systemic risk of commodity markets: A dynamic factor copula approach

This study aims to measure the systemic risk of commodity markets and investigate its causal relationship with the macroeconomy. First, we propose a novel measure called the joint probability of abnormal changes (JPAC) to measure the systemic risk of commodity markets. Second, we introduce two new measures, the expected proportion of commodities in abnormal price change (EPAPC) and the contribution to systemic risk (CSR), to identify the systemic importance of each commodity. Third, we examine the relationship between JPAC and some key macroeconomic variables using mixed-frequency Granger causality tests. We conduct an empirical study using 24 commodity indices from 2015 to 2021. Our results reveal that: (1) JPAC can well capture the risk events in the real world; (2) the systemic risk of commodity markets has increased significantly since the start of the US-China trade war; (3) EPAPC and CSR indicate that energy commodities have higher systemic importance than others and are most likely to cause market fluctuations; and (4) some causal relationships between the systemic risk of commodity markets and the macroeconomy are identified. Overall, this study improves our understanding of systemic risk in commodity markets and provides important implications for policymakers in China and the US.     

Equity market integration in Latin America: A time-varying integration score analysis

We develop a measure of market integration score by extending the methodology of Akdogan [J. Portf. Manage. (1996) 33; J. Portf. Manage. (1997) 82] to reflect the degree of integration of domestic equity markets with other markets in and beyond the region. We empirically estimate the integration scores for a sample of six Latin American markets between January 1988 and December 2001. We find a trend towards increased regional integration relative to global integration until the mid-1990s. A distinct change in trend is noted during the second half of the 1990s, with global integration proceeding faster than regional integration.     

Dependence structure between the equity market and the foreign exchange market–A copula approach

This paper investigates the dependence structure between the equity market and the foreign exchange market by using copulas. In particular, several copulas with different dependence structure are compared and used to directly model the underlying dependence structure. We find that there exists significant symmetric upper and lower tail dependence between the two financial markets, and the dependence remains significant but weaker after the launch of the euro. Our findings have important implications for both global investment risk management and international asset pricing by taking into account joint tail risk.     

全球股票市场系统性风险传递网络研究

本文采用系统性风险度量新指标LASSO-ΔCoVaR,构建全样本时期及各极端时期全球股票市场系统性风险传递网络,考察全球股票市场系统性风险传递水平及结构特征,并着重对极端状态下的风险传递进行分析。研究发现:第一,无论风险输入水平还是风险输出水平,不同股市的动态变化趋势大体一致,但波动幅度迥然不同,且单个股市风险输出水平的波动幅度远大于风险输入水平;第二,成熟经济体经济基本面恶化往往会增强其股市的系统性风险贡献,而新兴经济体则不同;第三,法国、荷兰、中国香港、德国和英国股市的风险溢出水平较高,同其他股市间的风险传递途径较多,是系统性风险传递网络中的核心节点;第四,我国股市与全球股市间的风险关联较弱,但我国股市潜在风险来源面广,同区域股市及金砖国家股市在我国股市与全球股市间的风险传递发挥重要作用。     

Financial crisis and extreme market risks: Evidence from Europe

This study draws attention to the proliferation of extreme risks in financial markets prior to and during the course of the recent global financial crisis. It examines the level of such “tail” risks in selected equity, interbank lending and foreign exchange markets in selected EU Member States in relation to the United States. The extent of tail risks is assessed by applying general error distribution (GED) parameterization in GARCH volatility tests of the examined variables. The empirical tests prove that extreme market risks were pronounced across all of the examined European financial markets throughout the crisis. They were also significant prior to the crisis outbreak. The analyzed interbank lending markets exhibited more extreme volatility outbursts than the equity and foreign exchange markets did.     

What drives the systemic banking crises in advanced economies?

This paper examines the drivers of post-war “systemic” banking crises in advanced economies. Using binary response models and a balanced panel of data, we show that persistently large departures from the long-run trend in housing and stock markets best predict the crises. Similar deviations in credit markets do not add to the explanatory power of the model that combines housing and stock market dynamics. Indicators capturing financial market risk perception also have high explanatory power. These findings indicate that extrapolative forecasts and neglect of tail risk drive asset market boom-bust cycles and systemic banking crises. Cycles in credit markets are driven by cycles in real-estate and stock markets before the crises. Additionally, capital inflow bonanzas fuel the stock and credit booms that spark systemic crises.     

Assessing financial market integration in Asia – Equity markets

Financial integration has strong implications for financial stability. On the one hand, financial integration among economies helps to improve their capacity to absorb shocks and foster development. On the other hand, intensified financial linkages in a world of increasing capital mobility may also harbour the risk of cross-border financial contagion. This paper provides a survey of high-frequency indicators to monitor the development of equity market integration in Asia. The results show that after slowing down between 2002 and 2006, the equity market integration process picked up again in 2007–08. Nevertheless, the process is not complete and the degrees of integration between mature and emerging equity markets are different. The divergence may be attributed to the difference in the political, economic and institutional aspects across jurisdictions in Asia.