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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

The Dynamics of Gasoline Prices: Evidence from Daily French Micro Data

Using millions of individual gasoline prices collected at a daily frequency, we examine the speed at which market prices of refined oil are transmitted to retail gasoline prices in France. For that, we estimate a reduced‐form model of state‐dependent pricing where thresholds triggering price changes are allowed to vary over time and depend on the duration since the last price change. We find that the degree of pass‐through of wholesale prices to retail gasoline prices is on average 0.77 for diesel and 0.67 for petrol and depend on local market characteristics. The duration for a shock to be fully transmitted into prices is about 10 days. There is no significant asymmetry in the transmission of wholesale price to retail prices. Finally, the duration since the last price change has a significant effect on thresholds triggering price changes but a large variance of idiosyncratic shocks on thresholds is also crucial to replicate the size distribution of price changes.     

International Price Discovery for Emerging Market Stocks: Evidence from Indian GDRs

Given the rapid increase of the number of emerging market stocks being dually listed abroad, it is important to understand the role of the foreign markets in the price discovery process. We examine this issue by studying the role of the London Global Depositary Receipts (GDR) market for Indian stocks. We find that the London and the Mumbai prices are cointegrated despite arbitrage restrictions imposed by Indian government regulations. Each market contributes almost equally to price discovery, a result in contrast to the small contribution of offshore markets to price discovery of stocks based in developed economies. The GDR market's contribution to price discovery increases with the foreign ownership of the firm and GDR issue size. We also find evidence of significant volatility spillovers from the London market to the Indian market. The overall results suggest that offshore trading in emerging market stocks play a beneficial role by aiding domestic price discovery.     

机构投资者、知情人交易和市场效率——来自中国资本市场的实证证据

2001年之后,我国机构投资者正经历着一个快速发展的时期。针对之前屡屡发生的违规行为,机构投资者在我国资本市场发展过程中究竟扮演了什么样的角色目前还存在很大的争议。根据Grossman与Stiglitz(1980)等研究提出的信息经济学理论,机构投资者的作用更直接的体现为通过知情人交易向市场传递信息。在以往研究的基础上,本文通过考察机构投资者交易对股价中公司特有信息含量的影响,从信息的角度对机构投资者在我国资本市场中所起到的作用进行了更进一步的检验。在控制了内生性、噪音等因素影响之后,实证结果显示机构投资者交易确实增加了股价中的公司特有信息含量,提高了市场的效率。本文加深了对我国资本市场中机构投资者的理解和认识,从更直接的角度验证了引入机构投资者对市场的作用,另一方面也在一定程度上说明监管者正确导向了机构投资者的行为。     

Market Segmentation Effects in Corporate Credit Rating Changes: The Case of Emerging Markets

We examine stock market reactions to corporate credit rating changes in 26 emerging market countries included in the Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) Emerging Market Index. We hypothesize and test the notion that emerging market firms in the American Depository Receipts (ADRs) markets are more likely to purchase ratings from the Big Two (Moody’s and S&P), and that they react more strongly to the announcements of corporate rating changes by Moody’s or S&P than to those of raters in local markets. We compare the effect of credit rating changes of the Big Two in two emerging stock markets: local markets (local currencies) and ADR markets (U.S. dollars). We find significant price reactions in the ADR markets, and insignificant reactions in local markets, and conclude that there is capital market segmentation in ADR markets for credit rating changes of emerging market firms. We find evidence that investors react more strongly in the ADR markets than local markets because they require higher costs of capital for firms cross-listed both in the ADR markets and local markets due to greater expected bankruptcy costs and foreign exchange risks of those firms. We also report that stock markets react significantly, not only to rating downgrades, but also to upgrades in the ADR markets.

Stock Market Volatility in an Emerging Market: Further Evidence from the Athens Stock Exchange

We investigate the time series properties of the daily and weekly returns from the Athens Stock Exchange (ASE) index for the years 1987 to 1997. We investigate whether important time-series characteristics have changed significantly over time. The Greek market has recently undergone major changes including complete capital flow liberalization, the implementation of computerized trading, as well as significant increases in market volume and capitalization; we thus contrast the 1987–90 and 1991–97 periods. Our findings suggest the dynamics of the ASE composite index returns have changed as the market has developed.     

The Halloween Effect and Japanese Equity Prices: Myth or Exploitable Anomaly

Bouman and Jacobsen (American Economic Review 92(5), 1618–1635, 2002) examine monthly stock returns for major world stock markets and conclude that returns are significantly lower during the May–October periods versus the November–April periods in 36 of 37 markets examined. They argue that, in general, the Halloween strategy outperforms the buy and hold strategy thereby casting doubt on the validity of the efficient market paradigm. More recently, Maberly and Pierce (Econ Journal Watch 1(1), 29–46, 2004) re-examine the evidence for U.S. equity prices and conclude that Bouman and Jacobsen’s results are not robust to alternative model specifications. Extending prior research, this paper examines the robustness of the Halloween strategy to alternative model specifications for Japanese equity prices. The Halloween effect is concentrated in the period prior to the introduction of Nikkei 225 index futures in September 1986. After the internationalization of Japanese financial markets in the mid-1980s, the Halloween effect disappears.JEL classification: G14, G15     

Changes in the value relevance of accounting information over time: Evidence from the emerging market of China

We investigate the changes in the value relevance of accounting information among Chinese firms over the past two decades, during which accounting reforms are launched to provide decision makers with increased disclosure and higher quality financial information. We also investigate the factors that differentiate firms showing significant value relevance improvement from firms showing little improvement. We find increases in the value relevance of some financial variables and decreases in others, which suggests that accounting numbers help to explain the pricing process of stock shares although at different levels. In addition, we find that value relevance improvements are more pronounced for smaller firms, firms with lower growth rates, and those with greater asset tangibility. We also document that value relevance improvements are generally lower in an exuberant stock market. These results have implications for a variety of information users and policy makers in emerging countries which are reforming their accounting systems.     

大宗商品价格波动与中国信贷市场运行分析

本文基于LA-VAR方法和CCF方法,对大宗商品价格与中国银行信贷市场主要变量之间的关系进行因果检验。检验结果显示:在5%的显著性水平上,大宗商品价格波动是存贷比、短期贷款利差、中长期贷款利差、总贷款余额、短期贷款余额变动的单方向原因。作者利用协整检验、VEC模型、脉冲响应和方差分解技术,分析了大宗商品价格波动对中国商业银行信贷市场的静态与动态影响。本文针对中国商业银行信贷市场的监管提出了两条政策建议:一是密切关注大宗商品价格并稳定大宗商品价格波动区间,二是货币政策的制定过程应纳入大宗商品价格。