Multiple Regimes and Volatility Transmission in Securitized Real Estate Markets

We examine the dynamics and transmission of conditional volatilities with multiple structural changes in return volatility using Bai and Perron (2003)’s methodology, across five major securitized real estate markets as well as employing a multivariate regime-dependent asymmetric dynamic covariance methodology (MRDADC) that allows the conditional matrix to be both time- and state-varying. Our results imply that a multiple-regime time varying asymmetric variance and covariance approach is important in modeling real estate securities valuation and selection and portfolio optimization, and is consistent with popular beliefs that market volatility changes over time. Our MRDADC models detect the presence of significant mean-volatility linkages across the five major securitized real estate markets under different volatility regimes and would have implications for global investor in terms of estimating a dynamic risk-minimizing hedge ratio in international portfolio management.     

Common factors in international securitized real estate markets

This study investigates the presence of common factors in the securitized real estate markets of the Untied States (US), United Kingdom (UK), Hong Kong (HK), and Singapore (SG). Using a combination of factor analysis and canonical correlation analysis on 10-year monthly return data for 142 real estate securities in the four markets, more common risk factors among real estate securities within a country than across countries are detected. In addition, there is at least one common securitized real estate market factor that is moderately correlated with the world real estate market, and to a lesser extent, with the world stock market. However, the degree of linkage across the four securitized real estate markets is much weaker than the strong linkages present across the four economies. It further appears that the extent to which correlations are found in international securitized real estate markets might largely be due to the increasing integrated nature of the world real economy, rather than a result of the globalization of financial markets. The results are preliminary, but indicative, and suggest that more studies exploring how common factors, together with the local market portfolio, could help explain the return-generating process of securitized real estate.     

Illiquidity,return and risk in G7 stock markets: Interdependencies and spillovers

Trading activity in G7 stock markets reflects not only the macroeconomic and financial impact of these G7 economies in international economic growth, but also their financial interdependence. While this nexus of major stock markets has been explored in terms of volatility and return spillovers, there has been no combined analysis of return, volatility and illiquidity spillovers. We study illiquidity spillovers because they are transmissions of trading activity and, thereof, transmissions of information and market sentiment. We find that the dynamics of international stock markets are characterized by persistent illiquidity and also that illiquidity shocks are significantly correlated across markets. Furthermore, we discover Granger causal associations between risk, return and illiquidity across G7 stock market and also within each stock market. Our findings bear significance for the regulation of international financial markets and also for international portfolio diversification.     

‘Slow-burn’ spillover and ‘fast and furious’ contagion: a study of international stock markets

‘Fast and furious’ contagion across capital markets is an important phenomenon in an increasingly integrated financial world. Different from ‘slow-burn’ spillover or interdependence among these markets, ‘fast and furious’ contagion can occur instantly. To investigate this kind of contagion from the US, Japan and Hong Kong to other Asian economies, we design a research strategy to capture fundamental interdependence, or ‘slow-burn’ spillover, among these stock markets as well as short-term departures from this interdependence. Based on these departures, we propose a new contagion measure which reveals how one market responds over time to a shock in another market. We also propose international portfolio analysis for contagion via variance decomposition from the portfolio manager’s perspective. Using this research strategy, we find that the US stock market was cointegrated with the Asian stock markets during four specific periods from 3 July 1997 to 30 April 2014. Beyond this fundamental interdependence, the shocks from both Japan and Hong Kong have significant ‘fast and furious’ contagion effects on other Asian stock markets during the US subprime crisis, but the shocks from the US have no such effects.     

Granular institutional investors and global market interdependence

We study the propagation of global investment risk across markets through the granular view of institutional investors. Applying the conditional value-at-risk estimation to micro-level weekly observations of international mutual funds between 2003 and 2011, we find that idiosyncratic shocks to large institutional investors explain both aggregate market risk and cross-market risk interdependence. Conditional on the US capital markets being in financial distress, idiosyncratic shocks to the top 10% largest funds investing in the US explain about 40% of the risk fluctuations in other non-US markets. The findings are also economically and statistically significant for the top largest funds investing in non-US markets, with the effects becoming especially large during the global financial crisis of 2007–09. These results are robust after controlling for common risk factors and applying alternative measures of idiosyncratic shocks.     

Long-term Memory in Volatility: Some Evidence from International Securitized Real Estate Markets

While the long memory property is examined in the literature for the US REIT returns, this paper extends the analysis to international securitized real estate markets with the hope of finding answers or confirming prior stock market evidence regarding the presence (or absence) of long memory volatilities for 40 weekly real estate indices (original and hedged). Using a battery of five econometric tests on three alternative risk measures; weekly observed absolute and squared mean deviations and conditional variances, we find statistically significant evidence of long memory in the volatility structure of most securitized real estate markets studied. Volatility persistence is particularly strong in Asia, but is not consistent throughout the period of study.     

U.S. Monetary Policy Surprises and International Securitized Real Estate Markets

This paper examines the impact of U.S. monetary policy surprises on securitized real estate markets in 18 countries. The policy surprises are measured by both the surprise changes to the target federal funds rate (the target factor) and surprises in the future direction of the Federal Reserve monetary policy (the path factor). The results show that most international securitized real estate markets have significantly positive responses to surprise decrease in current or future expected federal funds rates, though such responses vary greatly across countries. Also, while the U.S. securitized real estate market reacts mainly to the target factor, foreign securitized real estate markets react to the path factor. Furthermore, we find that the cross-country variation in the response to the target factor is correlated with the country’s exchange rate regime and its degree of real economic and particularly financial integration, while the cross-country variation in the response to the path factor is mainly related to the country’s degree of financial integration.     

Price Discovery in Real Estate Markets: A Dynamic Analysis

Although the correlation between the public and private market pricing of real estate has generated considerable research effort, the methods utilized in previous studies have failed to capture the dynamic nature of this correlation. This paper proposes a new statistical method to address this issue. This method, known as the dynamic conditional correlation GARCH model, enables us to study the dynamics of the correlation between the two markets over time and enrich our understanding of the public and private market pricing of real assets. We find that the correlation between NAV returns and REIT returns is dynamic for all REIT types and there is a strong degree of persistence in the series of correlation. Our Granger-causality tests show that price discovery generally takes place in the securitized public market. However, we also find significant variations across property types and individual firms within each type. Our results indicate that constructing an optimal portfolio requires firm level analysis of causality and correlation between REIT returns and NAV returns.     

Integration and interdependence of stock and foreign exchange markets: an Australian perspective

This paper examines the integration of the Australian stock market with its two leading trading partners, the US and Japan. In investigating the extent of integration, this study takes into account the interdependence between foreign exchange rates and stock prices, since exchange rates influence international competitiveness of firms, and, via interest rates, the cost of capital. The results indicate that there was a stable long-run relationship among the Australian, US and Japanese markets prior to the Asian crisis but that this relationship disappeared in the post-Asian crisis period. An analysis of the short-run dynamic linkages among markets suggests that, following the Asian crisis, the US influence on the Australian market diminished while the influence of Japan remained at a modest level. Furthermore, the impulse response analysis indicates only a contemporaneous transmission of shocks from one market to other markets. Confidence intervals for impulse responses are estimated using the bootstrap-after-bootstrap method.     

Oil price and stock market co-movement: What can we learn from time-scale approaches?

This paper study the relationship between oil and stock markets in G7 countries, by distinguishing between interactions based on fundamentals (long-term interdependence: high memory impact) and contagion (short-term interaction: transitory contamination). To do this, we propose in the first time two complementary frequency approaches based: the evolutionary co-spectral analysis and the wavelet approach allowing a time-varying measure of the dynamic correlation between the oil and stock markets over time and across time horizons. We find that interdependence between oil price and the stock market is more pronounced in the short and medium terms than in the long term. In addition, we prove that stock markets are more sensitive to oil shocks originating from demand shocks. These findings provide important policy implications for both policymakers, in terms of taking relevant actions regarding oil shocks originating from the demand side, and investors, in terms of a policy of diversification that depends on horizons.     

Asset Fire Sales and Purchases and the International Transmission of Funding Shocks

We identify a new channel for the transmission of shocks across international markets. Investor flows to funds domiciled in developed markets force significant changes in these funds' emerging market portfolio allocations. These forced trades or “fire sales” affect emerging market equity prices, correlations, and betas, and are related to but distinct from effects arising purely from fund holdings or from overlapping ownership of emerging markets in fund portfolios. A simple model and calibration exercise highlight the importance to these findings of “push” effects from funds' domicile countries and “co‐ownership spillover” between markets with overlapping fund ownership.     

On the intensity of liquidity spillovers in the Eurozone

This paper seeks to elucidate dimensions and directions of the liquidity spillover phenomenon in the Eurozone equity markets during the global financial crisis of 2007–2008. The research examines questions relevant to the shift-contagion in the Eurozone countries during the time of crisis, as well as the role of a liquidity channel of transmission relaying external shocks among those countries. The findings document the existence of non-linearities in the transmission mechanisms across selected markets; we use a structural model introduced by Favero and Giavazzi (2002) while controlling for interdependence. The result is in line with the crisis-contingent theories that suggest transmission of shocks through an endogenous liquidity channel. Furthermore, we notice a pattern of liquidity spillover from small markets to the German, French, Italian and UK markets even after controlling for monetary policy shocks, and we confirm the persistence of liquidity co-movements, supporting the argument that financial contagion in the Eurozone market was transmitted and intensified via the liquidity channel.     

Sources of gains from international portfolio diversification

This paper looks at the determinants of country and industry specific factors in international portfolio returns using a sample of forty eight countries and thirty nine industries over the last three decades. Country factors have remained relatively stable over the sample period while industry factors have significantly increased during the last decade and dropped again since 2000. The importance of industry and country factors is correlated with measures of economic and financial international integration and development. We find that financial market globalization is the main driving force behind the changes in relative magnitude of the different shocks. Country factors are smaller for countries integrated in world financial markets and have declined as the degree of financial integration and the number of countries pursuing financial liberalization has increased. Higher international financial integration within an industry increases the importance of industry factors in explaining returns. Economic integration of production also helps in explaining returns. Countries with a more specialized production activity have higher country shocks.     

Stock market liberalization and international risk sharing

This paper empirically examines what macroeconomic risks are shared (or not shared) internationally after stock market liberalization in several developing countries. To address this issue, we incorporate an international asset pricing model into a non-linear structural vector autoregression (VAR) system that identifies various sources of macroeconomic risks. We find that most of the risks corresponding to exogenous financial market shocks are surprisingly well shared, although other macroeconomic risks associated with exogenous shocks to output, inflation and monetary policies are not fully shared across countries. Our results suggest that one of the main benefits from stock market liberalization is to allow the countries studied in this paper to better hedge against exogenous and idiosyncratic financial market risks, and stock market liberalization needs to be accompanied by other measures of economic integration in order to achieve the full benefits of international risk sharing.     

The nature of listed real estate companies: property or equity market?

This paper addresses the question of whether shares of public real estate companies should be treated as real estate or as equity investments. Because theoretical considerations do not suffice for making such a classification, we empirically investigate correlation structures and cointegration relationships of private and public real estate and equity markets for the United States and the United Kingdom. Our results suggest that public real estate stocks show similarities to the general stock market with regard to short-term return co-movements. For long-term investment horizons, the interdependence between direct and securitized real estate is much stronger. However, in the latter case, real estate stocks substantially lead the private property markets.

International shocks and growth in emerging markets

The paper provides evidence on the extent and channels of transmission of international shocks on the economic growth of emerging markets. Using a block dynamic factor model, the shocks are decomposed into four components; a general global component, an activity based component, a financial component and a commodity price component. Using a sample of 75 emerging markets over the period 1992–2009, the paper finds that the average effect of international shocks on emerging markets' growth over the entire sample period is negligible, which supports the classic view of isolated, de-coupled emerging markets. However, there is considerable variation both over time, over cross-section and across factors. When we split our sample by time period, we find greater effect of the international factors on the emerging markets' growth during 2002–2009 period. There is evidence which suggests that sensitivity to international shocks has increased over time and at the country level these sensitivities are more pronounced. Although the drivers of integration vary as does the sensitivity to alternative sources of shocks, we find that certain emerging markets have become considerably more integrated with the global economy than others. Overall, there is evidence of a significant impact on the economic growth of some emerging markets of the international shock caused by the global financial crisis.     

Labour market rigidities and international risk sharing across OECD countries

In this paper we examine the role of labour market rigidities in the context of international consumption risk sharing. Stronger labour market regulation may make it easier to borrow against future income, thus allowing shocks to be smoothed to a greater extent. In addition, rigid labour markets may help to enforce implicit contracts that shift risk from employees to owners of firms, who, in turn, may diversify risk internationally. Using data for 19 OECD countries we show that labour market rigidities significantly increase consumption correlations and reduce the exposure to country-specific shocks. These results suggest that labour market rigidities improve the international sharing of consumption risks by fostering a more efficient intra-national allocation of risk.     

Changing integration of EMU public property markets

This paper examines the impact of the European Monetary Union (EMU) on European public property market integration. Results indicate that the property markets are long-run independent and show little evidence of short-run relationships prior to the formation of the EMU. However, the degree of interdependence and the extent of convergence among the largest property markets have intensified substantially after the launch of the Euro as the common currency in January, 1999. Moreover, each of the property markets under consideration is endogenous in that none is found to “dominate” the others toward long-run equilibrium. Short-run results indicate substantial interrelationships among the markets after the adoption of the Euro. Finally, the study shows that stock markets, bond markets, and public property markets follow similar convergence patterns.     

Leverage Constraints and the International Transmission of Shocks

Recent macroeconomic experience has drawn attention to the importance of interdependence among countries through financial markets and institutions, independently of traditional trade linkages. This paper develops a model of the international transmission of shocks due to interdependent portfolio holdings among leverage‐constrained investors. In our model, without leverage constraints on investment, financial integration itself has no implication for international macro comovements. When leverage constraints bind, however, the presence of these constraints in combination with diversified portfolios introduces a powerful financial transmission channel that results in a positive comovement of production, independently of the size of international trade linkages. In addition, the paper shows that with binding leverage constraints, the type of financial integration is critical for international comovement. If international financial markets allow for trade only in noncontingent bonds, but not equities, then the international comovement of shocks is negative. Thus, with leverage constraints, moving from bond trade to equity trade reverses the sign of the international transmission of shocks.     

The behaviour of asset return and volatility spillovers in Turkey: A tale of two crises

This paper examines return and volatility spillovers between the Turkish stock market with international stock, exchange rate and commodity markets. Our aim is not only to examine spillover behaviour with a large emerging market but also to examine cross—asset spillovers and how they vary across two periods of financial market crisis; the dotcom crash and the liquidity-induced financial crisis. This is to be compared with existing work that typically focuses on industrialised countries or single asset markets only. Using the spillover index methodology we uncover an interesting distinction between these two periods of markets stress. Over the dotcom period spillovers are largely between the same asset class, notably two exchange rate series and two international stock markets series. However, in the period including the financial crisis, spillovers both increase and cross asset types and suggest a much greater degree of market interdependence. Understanding this changing nature in spillovers is key for investors, regulators and academics involved in theoretical model development.