Testing Efficiency Across Markets: Evidence from the NCAA Basketball Betting Market

This study utilizes the National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball point spread betting market to investigate whether differences in information availability across markets result in different relative efficiencies of price formation within those markets. Using intra-conference games of various conferences as clearly defined markets, we show that these markets are efficient given the information available in those markets. However, we also show that regression error variances are significantly smaller (greater) for those conferences with greater (lesser) information availability. This evidence supports previous stock market research suggesting that differential fundamental information availability across stock markets results in differential departures from equilibrium values.     

The Relationship Between Energy Commodity Prices and Electricity and Market Index Performances: Evidence from an Emerging Market

We investigate the effect of energy commodity price movements on market and electricity index returns in Turkey for the periods before, during, and after the year 2008. Although the Turkish economy is highly reliant on oil, we find that oil price does not lead either electricity or market indexes. This might be attributable to sluggish integration of financial markets in Turkey compared to developed markets. Natural gas price leads electricity index in the pre-2008 period. Its significance is reduced following the decline in natural gas usage in electricity production. This suggests that commodity dependence may be driving the link between commodity and asset prices in related sectors.     

Changes in the Information Efficiency of Stock Prices: Additional Evidence

Previous research shows, using data from three quarters after the implementation of regulation fair disclosure (Reg FD), that there is an improvement in the informational efficiency of stock prices after Reg FD. We compare the informational efficiency of stock prices in four pre-Reg FD quarters (1999–2000) and 12 post-Reg FD quarters (2002–2005). The improvement in the informational efficiency of stock prices previously reported in the immediate aftermath of Reg FD persists in later periods.     

Efficient Markets Hypothesis and the Emerging Capital Market in Sri Lanka: Evidence from the Colombo Stock Exchange – A Note

The behaviour of stock prices on the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) is examined with a view to determine its consistency with the weak form of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis (EMH). Runs, Autocorrelation and Cointegration tests are applied to daily, weekly and monthly CSE index data for the period of January 1991–November 1996. Results of Runs, Correlation and Cointegration tests overwhelmingly reject the serial independence hypothesis, leading to the conclusion that the behaviour of stock prices in the Colombo Stock Exchange is not consistent with the weak form of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis. Tests of the-day-of-the-week-effect, however, show that there is no evidence of such a phenomenon on the Colombo Stock Exchange stock prices. Results of the tests of the-month-of-the-year-effect lead to the conclusion that CSE prices do not display any month-specific behaviour.     

Securities Transaction Tax and Market Efficiency: Evidence from the Japanese Experience

This study examines the effect of transaction costs on the time series behavior of stock returns over a period surrounding the April 1989 changes in tax rates on securities transactions and capital gains in Japan. We find significant decreases in estimates of the first-order autocorrelation in returns for Japanese stocks listed in Japan, but no changes for Japanese stocks dually listed in the United States as American Depository Receipts (ADRs), which were not subject to the tax law change. We also find lower price basis between the ADRs and their underlying Japanese stocks. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that a reduction in transaction costs improves the efficiency of the price discovery process.

Prices and returns on paintings: An exercise on how to price the priceless

Art is priceless, but paintings, and other objects, have been sold on markets since the time of the Roman Empire. In this paper, we describe a method for constructing a price index for paintings and compare this index to the indices of various financial markets. In particular, we discuss whether the price of art is related to financial markets, whether the art market is weakly efficient, and whether it is more or less risky than financial markets.     

Price Interactions in a Sequential Global Market: Evidence from the Cross-listed Stocks

In this paper, we investigate the pattern of dynamic interactions among the prices of those stocks that are cross-listed on the three major stock markets of the world, i.e. New York, London and Tokyo. Major findings are: first, regardless of the nationality of stocks, innovations in the 'home' market returns are always fed into the returns in the 'overseas' markets, with the former causing the latter in the Granger sense. However, innovations in the New York market returns of foreign stocks are fed back into their respective home markets, contributing to the price discovery there. Second, the 'succeeding' overseas market, which operates immediately after the home market, plays a dual-role: it conducts the home market innovations to the next-opening overseas market, as well as adds its own innovations. Third, the exchange rate changes substantially influence the overseas market returns, but not the home market returns. The exchange rates appear to play a role in the transmission mechanism mainly via the inter-market price parity.     

New entry,strategic diversity and efficiency in soccer betting markets: the creation and suppression of arbitrage opportunities

ABSTRACT

We find that prices offered by competing bookmakers within the same quote-driven soccer (football) betting market provide arbitrage opportunities. However, the management practices of bookmakers prevent informed bettors exploiting these in practice. We identify two groups of bookmakers, ‘position-takers’ and ‘book-balancers’. Position-takers alter their odds infrequently, while actively restricting informed traders. Book-balancers actively manage inventory by adjusting odds, and place few restrictions on their customers. We identify 545 arbitrage portfolios, and find that around 50% would require a bet on the favourite at the position-taking bookmaker. The management practices of position-takers generally prevent these opportunities being exploited in practice.     

Stock Prices and Inflation: New Evidence from the Pacific-Basin Countries

This paper investigates the statistical relationship between stock prices and inflation in nine countries in the Pacific-Basin. On balance, regression analysis on the nine markets shows negative relationships between stock returns in real terms and inflation in the short run, while co-integration tests on the same markets display a positive relationship between the same variables over the long run. The time path of the response of stock prices plotted against corresponding changes in consumer price indices validates this dichotomy in time-related response patterns of stock prices to inflation; namely, a blip of negative responses at the beginning changes to a positive response over a longer period of time. Stock prices in Asia, like those in the U.S. and Europe, appear to reflect a time-varying memory associated with inflation shocks that make stock portfolios a reasonably good hedge against inflation in the long run.     

创业板市场IPO定价效率研究——来自香港市场的经验证据

本文对香港创业板市场IPO抑价现象进行了实证检验，研究表明，香港创业板IPO市场定价效率相对较低：风险投资家能够带领风险企业提前上市并得到投资者认同；IPO企业经营年限、价值不确定性及IPO发行时信息处理效率等变量对香港创业板IPO市场定价效率有显著影响：承销商、审计事务所的鉴证功能得不到体现；高效的IPO发行机制有利于创业板IPO市场效率的提高。     

原油价格与经济政策不确定性对大宗商品市场非对称冲击效应研究

利用面板分位回归模型,考量不同市场环境下原油价格与经济政策不确定性对大宗商品市场非对称性冲击效应。结果表明：油价冲击对中国大宗商品收益的影响具有非对称性,正负油价冲击对其均有促进作用,但随着市场环境好转,正油价冲击的作用逐渐增强,负油价冲击则逐渐减弱;政策不确定性对大宗商品收益有促进作用,但在牛市环境下有抑制作用;且危机前后,油价冲击对大宗商品收益的影响存在非对称性效应。     

Market Reform and Efficiency: The Case of KOSPI200 Options

The Korean government and exchange have identified a need to regulate excessive speculative trading and to protect domestic individual investors from foreign and professional traders. As such, they have proposed an options market reform that requires higher levels of margin accounts for options trading and that increases the basic options multipliers in the KOSPI200 options market. This study examines how this market reform affects the price disagreement and adjustment behaviors of the index options market. Our analyses indicate that the efficiency and information quality of out-of-the-money options trades have increased since the reform took effect.     

Market Efficiency, Thin Trading and Non-linear Behaviour: Evidence from an Emerging Market

Emerging markets efficiency has been widely investigated, with mixed results. However such evidence is only reliable if the methodology adopted accounts for the institutional features of the market. Unlike previous studies this paper corrects for thin trading and incorporates possible non-linear behaviour and regulatory changes. Using Istanbul Stock Exchange data we show that in its early years the exchange was characterised by non-linear behaviour and inefficient pricing. However, regulatory changes encouraged participation, improved information quality and led to prices impounding information more rapidly, suggesting markets become efficient with high trading volume, reliable information and an appropriate institutional framework.     

Momentum and Foreign Investors: Evidence from the Korean Stock Market

Abstract:

We examine whether the price impact of foreign investors on the Korean stock market from December 2000 to February 2007 generated a momentum phenomenon. In our empirical results, foreigners seem to have exerted a significantly positive impact on prices in “up” markets (periods of positive stock returns), but have had little impact on prices in “down” markets (periods of negative returns). We document that the impact of foreigners’ trades is concentrated in large companies. Most importantly, when the market is in the up state, the returns of stocks of large companies that were positively affected by foreign investors in the previous six-month period continue to increase in the subsequent six-month period. As a result, the subsequent six-month return on a past “winner” stock portfolio is significantly higher than that on a past “loser” stock portfolio. This brings to mind a momentum phenomenon that has been reported not to exist in the Korean stock market.     

The Effect of House Price on Stock Market Participation in China: Evidence from the CHFS Microdata

This is an empirical study on the effect of house price on stock market participation and its depths based on unique China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) data in 2011 and 2013 including 36,213 sample households. We mainly found that, with an increase of one thousand RMB per square meter in macrohouse price, the probability to participate in the stock market will increase by 5.4% before controlling for wealth effect and 2.84% afterwards, indicating the existence of wealth effect. The participation depths of the stock-total asset ratio are expected to decrease by 0.23%, and absolute stock asset is observed to decrease by 5.8 thousand RMB in response to one thousand RMB increase of per square meter house price. The effect of house price on participation decision is also related to housing area, and the negative effect of house price on stock market participation depths gets more intense with the increase of the stock-total asset ratio.     

Efficiency of football betting markets: the economic significance of trading strategies

Prior studies of the Australian Rugby League betting market report a degree of predictability well in excess of that attributable to chance. However, two important recent changes in the structure of the market facilitate an unambiguous assessment of the statistical significance of predictability and the economic significance of returns to betting strategies. The present paper reexamines the efficiency of the Australian Rugby League betting market under the revised market structure. In addition, a set of measures of the economic significance of trading strategies are developed and implemented. Relative to prior studies, the out‐of‐sample success of the predictive model has diminished notably under the revised market structure; although a naïve strategy betting on home underdogs still performs significantly better than can be attributed to chance. Simulation experiments suggest that the documented level of predictability from several strategies generates economically significant returns.     

Effects of the Adoption of IFRS on the Credit Market: Evidence from Brazil

Based on a sample of approximately 6500 credit ratings and 137,000 loan contracts, this paper analyzes the effects of mandatory IFRS adoption on the Brazilian credit market. We find that the IFRS adoption effects were limited to firms displaying improved accounting information quality at the time of transition, lending support to the notion that economic benefits do not necessarily flow from the publication of financial reports in IFRS but, rather, depend on how earnestly firms adopt the recommended disclosure practices.     

The Unbiasedness Hypothesis in the Freight Forward Market: Evidence from Cointegration Tests

The current paper investigates the unbiasedness hypothesis of Forward Freight Agreement (FFA) prices in the freight over-the-counter (OTC) forward market trades. Cointegration techniques are employed to examine the hypothesis. The results indicate that: FFA prices one and two months before maturity are unbiased predictors of the realised spot freight rates for all investigated shipping routes; three months FFA prices for panamax Pacific routes are unbiased predictors of spot prices, while FFA prices for panamax Atlantic routes are found to be biased predictors of spot prices. This diverse evidence suggests that the validity of the unbiasedness hypothesis depends on the specific characteristics of the market under investigation, the selected trading route and the time to maturity of the contract. JEL classification G13, G14, C32     

Robust Estimation of Beta Coefficients: Evidence from a Small Stock Market

In this paper we demonstrate that robust estimators improve the reliability of estimates of beta coefficients on small, thinly traded stock markets. We outline several different types of robust and bounded influence regression estimators and assess them using a jackknife methodology on data from the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. The empirical evidence confirms the hypothesis that robust estimators are more efficient than least squares estimators and indicates that least squares estimators may over-estimate systematic risk in some cases.