Coming of age – a comparative study of emerging foreign exchange markets

We developed a market maturity index as a composite of the relative liquidity index (which was used historically to measure market maturity) and a market sophistication index, constructed by analyzing market volume and transaction data. We also constructed a risk management index using volatility and V2 (volatility of the volatility) to measure ease of risk management. Five (out of 14) emerging markets we studied – India, Brazil, Malaysia, Turkey and Poland – improved their risk management index scores from 2007 to 2009, suggesting increasing maturity. On the other hand, South Africa, Taiwan and South Korea, all markets that had seemed reasonably mature in 2007, performed extremely poorly from a risk management perspective in 2009, suggesting that their original high market maturity index scores were probably not very stable.     

Political Risk and Foreigners' Trading: Evidence from an Emerging Stock Market

This paper analyzes the impact of political risk on foreign investors' trading in emerging stock markets, market-wide and for industry portfolios, using quantified political risk ratings reported in the International Country Risk Guide and foreign flows data compiled by the Istanbul Stock Exchange. We also track the differential effect of political risk upgrades and downgrades. Political risk is shown to affect stock returns, net foreign flows, and macroeconomic variables. Foreigners' reaction to upgrades (downgrades) is slow (immediate) and smaller in magnitude. Foreigners' reaction to political risk varies with industry's sensitivity to market risk, except for the tourism sector, where their response is particularly salient. Local investors appear to provide liquidity to foreigners, who respond to information.     

Downside Risk in Emerging Markets

This paper investigates the relation between downside risk and expected returns on the aggregate stock market in an international context. Nonparametric and parametric value at risk are used as measures of downside risk to determine the existence of a risk-return trade-off. For emerging markets, fixed effects panel data regressions provide evidence for a significantly positive relationship between monthly expected market returns and downside risk. This result is robust after controlling for aggregate dividend yield and price-to-fundamental ratios. The relationship between expected returns and downside risk is weaker for developed markets and vanishes when control variables are included in the specification.     

Dynamic Hedging Effectiveness in South Korean Index Futures and the Impact of the Asian Financial Crisis

This paper focuses on the impact of the 1997 Asian financial market crisis upon hedging effectiveness within the KOSPI 200 stock index and index futures markets. The paper utilizes the inter-temporal relationship between the two markets to examine the characteristics of several minimum variance hedge ratios. It also examines the performances of alternative hedging strategies for dynamic portfolio management in the presence of cointegrated time-varying risks. The results show a decline in the persistence of conditional volatility within market prices after the crisis. This decline leads to the relative performance of utilizing constant hedge ratios to increase, though not significantly so to guarantee a superior performance over more sophisticated time-varying hedge ratio strategies.     

The Interest Rate Exposure of Nonfinancial Corporations

Many interest rates are as volatile as exchange rates and thus represent an equallyimportant source of risk for corporations. While this is true not only for financialinstitutions, but for other corporations as well, little is known about the interest rateexposure of nonfinancial firms. Consequently, this paper investigates the impact ofinterest rate risk on a large sample of nonfinancial corporations. It presents empiricalevidence for the existence of linear and nonlinear exposures with regard to movementsin various interest rate variables. The interest rate exposure is empirically determinedby measures of firm liquidity, but not by financial leverage.     

Pursuit of complete markets: the missing perspectives

India's financial sector reform path has been a measured, cautious and steady process, aiming to attain standards of international best practice, but fine-tuning the process keeping the context in view. Although much has been achieved, this paper focuses on the remaining gaps. But post-crisis the pursuit of complete markets is no longer the holy grail of regulation. In particular, underlying needs and systemic risk assessment should drive the regulatory framework for cash markets, not the elusive search for market completion and efficient derivatives markets.     

Valuation Model of Defaultable Bond Values in Emerging Markets

This paper develops a model to value defaultable bonds in emerging markets. Default occurs when some signaling process hits a pre-defined default barrier. The signaling variable is considered to be some macro-economic variables such as foreign exchange rates. The dynamics of the default barrier depend on the volatility and the drift of the signaling variable. We derive a closed-form solution of the defaultable bond price from the model as a function of a signaling variable and a short-term interest rate. The numerical results show that the model values generated by using foreign exchange rates as the signaling variables can broadly track the market credit spreads of defaultable bonds in South Korea and Brazil. Given an expected level of the foreign exchange rate, defaultable bond values under a stressed market situation can be obtained.