Bond markets co-movement dynamics and macroeconomic factors: Evidence from emerging and frontier markets

This paper examines the co-movement dynamics of ten emerging and four frontier government bond markets with the US market and the impact of macroeconomic factors and global bond market uncertainty on the time-varying co-movement. We find that macroeconomic factors play important role in explaining time variations in the bond return co-movement. Specifically, domestic macroeconomic factors have higher relative importance than global factors, with domestic monetary policy and domestic inflationary environment identified as the most influential factors. The global bond market uncertainty, based on an implied volatility measure, has explanatory power in driving co-movement dynamics in emerging and frontier bond markets.     

Flight-to-liquidity: Evidence from China's stock market

In an order-driven and strictly regulated stock market, illiquidity risks' effects on asset pricing should be highlighted, particularly in such extreme market conditions as those in China. This paper utilizes panel data from China's stock market in an attempt to answer whether the illiquidity risk in various dimensions—including price impacts, the transaction speed, trading volume, transaction costs, and asymmetric information—can explain stock returns. We find that almost all dimensions of stock illiquidity are positively associated with excess stock returns. More importantly, smaller, less-liquid stocks suffer more liquidity costs, providing a strong evidence for “flight-to-liquidity.” Additionally, the transaction costs and asymmetric information, denoted by bid-ask spreads, robustly account for these illiquidity effects on stock pricing and differ from the findings in the U.S. market. We also find that the “flight-to-liquidity” can partially explain the idiosyncratic volatility puzzle, investors' gambling, and herding psychologies. This study provides substantial policy implications in regulation and portfolio management for emerging markets.     

Endogenous market development for government securities in lower-income economies

Many lower-income economies have difficulty developing government securities markets (GSMs). A “Two-Dimensional Policy Framework for GSM Development” offers a solution to improve upon the twenty-year-old World Bank/IMF's conventional policy framework. It differentiates GSMs by their development phases and presents endogenously phase-coherent policy sets. This research found that the endogenous variables explained 40% of trading volume growth in the early phase of India's GSM development and that utilities played a dominant role in increasing trade volumes in the early-phase market. The framework is worth test-applying to GSM development in lower-income economies.     

The anatomy of financial crises: Evidence from the emerging ADR market

We study the anatomy of recent financial crises in Mexico, East Asia, Russia, Brazil, Turkey, and Argentina by investigating the efficiency and pricing of the emerging American depositary receipt (ADR) market. We use a non-parametric technique to test for persistent regime shifts in two basic structural relationships for ADR returns in 20 emerging countries — identified via arbitrage and capital mobility considerations — that should always hold in efficient and integrated capital markets. We find that those “normal” market conditions were instead often violated in proximity of financial crises: The law of one price often weakened (by 54% on average) and domestic sources of risk became more important (often by more than 100%) for many emerging ADRs. We also find the likelihood of these regime shifts to be related to proxies for uncertainty among investors, exchange rate volatility, trade linkages, and liquidity (but not stock market trends, currency devaluations, capital flight, or capital controls).     

Do global factors impact BRICS stock markets? A quantile regression approach

This paper examines the dependence structure between the emerging stock markets of the BRICS countries and influential global factors. Using the quantile regression approach, our results for the period from September 1997 to September 2013 show that the BRICS stock markets exhibit dependence with the global stock and commodity markets (S&P index, oil, and gold) as well as changes in the U.S. stock market uncertainty (CBOE Volatility Index). This dependence structure is often asymmetric and affected by the onset of the recent global financial crisis. By contrast, the U.S. economic policy uncertainty has no impact on the BRICS stock markets.     

Quantitative Easing and Liquidity in the Japanese Government Bond Market

The “Quantitative and Qualitative Monetary Easing” enacted immediately after the inauguration of Bank of Japan Governor Kuroda brought violent fluctuations in the prices of government bonds and deteriorated market liquidity. Does a central bank's government bond purchasing policy generally reduce market liquidity? Do conditions exist that can prevent such a decrease? This study analyzes how the Bank of Japan's purchasing policy changes influenced market liquidity. The results reveal that three specific policy changes contributed significantly to improving market liquidity: (i) increased purchasing frequency; (ii) a decrease in the purchase amount per auction; and (iii) reduced variability in the purchase amounts. These policy changes facilitated investors' purchase schedule expectations and helped reduce market uncertainty. The evidence supports the theory that the effect of government bond purchasing policy on market liquidity depends on the market's informational environment.     

The fear of globalizing capital markets

It is generally accepted that free flow of goods benefits both economies without serious risks. The situation with the free flow of capital is different. Many policy makers and economists are skeptical not only about the benefits of free flow of capital, but also see uncontrolled capital flows as risky and destabilizing. Other economists, however, firmly believe that free capital flows will lead to a more efficient allocation of resources and greater economic growth. Nevertheless, the debate has little empirical evidence to rely on. We hope to fill that gap in this paper. We study the benefits and risks associated with capital flows by examining the experience of emerging economies around the time that foreign investment in stock markets was allowed. We investigate the impact of capital flows on stock returns, stock market efficiency, inflation, and exchange rates. We also examine the effect on different kinds of volatility that might arise as a consequence of capital flows: volatility of stock returns, volatility of inflation rates, and volatility of exchange rates. We find no evidence of an increase in inflation or an appreciation of exchange rates. Stock returns reflect a lower cost of capital after liberalization. There is no increase in stock market volatility and the volatility of inflation and exchange rates actually decreases. Stock markets become more efficient as determined by testing the random walk hypothesis.     

证券交易税对市场波动性的影响:来自中国股市的证据

本文运用ARCH族模型检验了2001年股票交易印花税税率降低对沪、深股市波动性的影响,为有关证券交易税对市场波动性影响的讨论增添了一个来自新兴市场的证据。计量结果表明,该次税率变动对沪市波动性的影响在统计上是不显著的;深市的波动性在税率降低后虽然有统计上显著的增加,但是这个变化太小,没有实际意义。我们的研究结果表明,对于像中国股市这类市场结构和市场制度处于变化之中的新兴市场,如果试图通过调整证券交易税税率这类显性的交易成本来影响市场波动性,其效果是有限的。     

Transmission of central bank communication to emerging economies: Evidence from the Korean stock market

This study analyzes the impact of US central bank communication on financial markets in emerging economies. We find that informal communication from the Fed positively influences the Korean stock market at a greater magnitude than the US stock market. The results show that the Korean stock market experienced higher excess return when Korea's monetary policy decisions are uncertain, suggesting that central bank communication in central countries could transmit to emerging economics through their monetary policy decisions and uncertainty. In addition, various portfolios and individual equities have a positive market risk-return tradeoff in the presence of Fed communication only.     

经济政策不确定性对我国股市波动的影响——基于2007—2019年上证指数的实证分析

股票市场的波动受到宏观经济政策的影响。本文研究2007年1月—2019年10月的月度数据,其结论如下:(1)主效应的经济政策不确定性越高,我国股市波动率越低;(2)在惯性因素上我国股市波动率会显著受到滞后波动率的影响;(3)在结构性断点上我国股市波动率在2008年金融危机和2010年融资融券交易处存在结构性断点;(4)在交互效应上2010年融资融券交易制度的建立降低了股市波动率对于经济政策不确定性的敏感程度。本文的研究结论拓展了研究边界,为宏观政策制定及资本市场投资提供了思路参考。     

Time and frequency connectedness of uncertainties in cryptocurrency,stock, currency,energy, and precious metals markets

This paper examines the connectedness of uncertainty in cryptocurrency, stock, currency, and commodity markets. We use the novel news-based cryptocurrency uncertainty indices of Lucey et al. (2021) and global implied volatility indices as uncertainty proxies for stock, currency, energy, and precious metals markets. We analyze weekly data between January 2014 and May 2021, employing the time and frequency connectedness measures of Diebold and Yilmaz (2012) and Baruník and Křehlík (2018). Our results show a low degree of uncertainty connectedness between cryptocurrency and other markets. The results imply long-term diversification opportunities and highlight the distinct dynamics of the cryptocurrency markets.     

Liquidity and macroeconomic management in emerging markets

Emerging markets have received considerable attention for foreign investment and international diversification due to the possibility of higher earnings and a low level of integration with global equity markets. These high returns often need to be balanced by the high liquidity costs of trading in illiquid emerging markets. Several studies have shown that central bank and government policies are significant determinants of market liquidity. We investigate the influence of monetary and fiscal policy variables on the market and firm level liquidity of eight emerging stock markets of Asia. Using four different (il)liquidity measures and nine macroeconomic variables, we find that changes in the money supply, government expenditure and private borrowing significantly affect stock market liquidity. Illiquidity is also strongly affected by the bank rate, short-term interest rate and government borrowing. We demonstrate that ‘crowding out’ and ‘cost of funds’ effects exist in these markets. Other major findings are that some markets are more sensitive to local macroeconomic news than world factors, the impact on size based portfolios largely depends on the instruments used by the central banks and government, the liquidity of the manufacturing sector is affected by changes in any policy variables, financial institutions are only influenced by monetary policy variables, and the service sector is least affected.     

Liquidity and stock returns in emerging equity markets

Using data for 27 emerging equity markets for the period January 1992 through December 1999, we document the behavior of liquidity in emerging markets. We find that stock returns in emerging countries are positively correlated with aggregate market liquidity as measured by turnover ratio, trading value and the turnover–volatility multiple. The results hold in both cross-sectional and time-series analyses, and are quite robust even after we control for world market beta, market capitalization and price-to-book ratio. The positive correlation between stock returns and market liquidity in a time-series analysis is consistent with the findings in developed markets. However, the positive correlation in a cross-sectional analysis appears to be at odds with market microstructure theory that has been empirically supported by studies on developed markets. Our findings regarding the cross-sectional relation between stock returns and liquidity is consistent with the view that emerging equity markets have a lower degree of integration with the global economy.     

Does Index Futures Trading Reduce Volatility in the Chinese Stock Market? A Panel Data Evaluation Approach

This study investigates the effect of introducing index futures trading on the spot price volatility in the Chinese stock market. We employ a recently developed panel data policy evaluation approach (Hsiao, Ching, and Wan, 2011) to construct counterfactuals of the spot market volatility, based mainly on cross‐sectional correlations between the Chinese and international stock markets. This new method does not need to specify a particular regression or a time‐series model for the volatility process around the introduction date of index futures trading, and thus avoids the potential omitted variable bias caused by uncontrolled market factors in the existing literature. Our results provide empirical evidence that the introduction of index futures trading significantly reduces the volatility of the Chinese stock market, which is robust to different model selection criteria and various prediction approaches. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 33:1167–1190, 2013     

Volatility spillover and hedging effectiveness among China and emerging Asian Islamic equity indexes

We study the volatility spillover between China and Asian Islamic stock markets. We use a sample of six Islamic MSCI indices from the Asian region, namely China, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Korea and Thailand obtained from MSCI (Morgan Stanley Capital International). In this paper we analyze the importance of considering spillover effects between emerging Asian Islamic indexes based on the Bivariate VARMA-BEKK-AGARCH model of McAleer et al. (2009), which includes spillover and asymmetric effects. We compute after the effectiveness of portfolio diversification based on the conditional volatility of returns series. Results show a significant positive and negative return spillover from China to selected Asian Islamic stock market and bidirectional volatility spillovers between China, Korea and Thailand Islamic market showing evidence of short-term predictability on Islamic Chinese stock market movements. However there is no short term volatility persistence in India, Indonesia and Malaysia. GARCH results show no persistence in volatility spillover effect in long term from Chinese to Indian, Indonesian and Korean Islamic stock market. Our findings are beneficial for international portfolio diversification for policy makers and investors since the results of portfolio management and hedging effectiveness ratio are different to previous studies.     

Government Quality Determinants of Stock Market Performance in African Countries

How do government policies and institutions affect stock market performance? As stock markets grow broader and deeper in African countries, the question becomes more critical. Government quality dynamics of corruption control, government effectiveness, political stability or no violence, voice and accountability, regulation quality and rule of law are instrumented with income levels, religious dominations, press freedom degrees, and legal origins to account for stock market performance dynamics of capitalization, value traded, turnover and number of listed companies. The results demonstrate a significant positive association between stock market performance measures and the quality of government institutions. These findings suggest countries with better developed government institutions would favor stock markets with higher market capitalization, better turnover ratios, higher value in shares traded and greater number of listed companies.     

Predictability of Financial Crises: Lessons from Sweden for Other Countries

The predictability of financial crises is widely regarded as low. However, skills linked to market psychology (behavioral finance) and the understanding of history and macrofinancial aggregates have been insufficiently integrated in the forecasting and risk management of financial institutions. Traditional financial modeling can no longer be applied as nicely as in the past. In Sweden, the financial crises of the early 1990s and in the latter part of the past decade were caused by overconfidence, control illusion, and herd mentality—but also by shortcomings in management and corporate governance. There is no evidence that these two serious Swedish banking crises were not foreseeable. The general question is when and under which circumstances financial decision-makers and authorities should listen to the usual minority of warning voices. One conclusion is that economists should be more “in house-oriented,” and top managers should heed their professional opinions. Conclusions from this paper can also be drawn for China, India, and other emerging markets both when it comes to financial deregulation policy and government debt risks in deregulated financial markets.     

Institutional determinants of emerging market returns and flows

Investors commonly rely on macroeconomic variables to drive capital allocation decisions. But other institutional factors may alter investor returns as well, particularly in emerging market countries. Given these concerns, this paper examines the effects of institutional factors—specifically democracy, transparency and corruption—on emerging market equity returns and flows. We find that institutional quality impacts stock market returns and flows in emerging markets where corruption, transparency, and democracy levels are below average. We also find that government-owned or controlled industries are positively impacted by a deterioration in the corruption and democracy indexes, while highly concentrated sectors, like the financial industry, are negatively impacted by improving transparency.     

Corruption and bank risk-taking: Evidence from emerging economies

This paper addresses the impact of corruption on banks' risk-taking behavior, using bank-level data from more than 1200 banks in 35 emerging economies during the period 2000–2012. We find consistent evidence that higher levels of corruption increase the risk-taking behavior of banks, in favor of the “sand the wheel” view in the corruption-development nexus. In addition, we examine the indirect effects of corruption on bank risks, and find evidence that the impact of monetary policy on banks' risk-taking behavior is more pronounced with the increasing severity of corruption.     

沪港通的绩效增长与反向选择效应——兼论实现高质量增长的资本市场改革路径

本文从金融服务实体企业角度探讨了沪港通对“成分股”绩效增长是否存在激励效应和治理效应,以及沪港通的成分股“选择机制”是否存在“反向选择效应”,并综合运用线性调整、逆概率加权、内生处理效应、异质性处理效应等估计方法,得出如下结论:(1)“沪港通”政策的实施有助于提升成分股企业的绩效水平;(2)沪港通持股水平高更有助于提升企业绩效水平,表明沪港通持股存在治理效应;(3)政策实施过程存在潜在的福利损失——那些在“沪港通”中受益水平较低的企业更大概率地被选入成分股,从而降低了开放政策所能达到的最优福利水平。这表明以“试点”方式进行资本市场开放,会产生因“反向选择”而导致的福利损失。因此,需要加强改革的“强度”和“广度”,适时提升“沪港通”交易份额,并扩大沪港通成分股范围,以提高微观企业增长水平及增长质量。