Global Volatility and Forex Returns in East Asia*

During 2001–2010, increases in mature market volatility were associated with declines in forex returns for East Asian economies, consistent with an overall ‘flight to safety’ effect. Estimates from GARCH models suggest that a 10 percentage point increase in mature market equity volatility generated an exchange rate depreciation of up to 3/4 percent. This sensitivity rose during a more tranquil subsample for some countries, reflecting their greater integration with global financial markets. Long‐run forex volatility increased in Asian economies after 2008, reflecting the global reach of the financial crisis in mature markets. Unconditional standard deviations estimated from these models provide operational measures of ‘long‐term’ and ‘excess’ volatility in forex markets.     

Financial Globalisation and Emerging Markets Volatility

The volatility of capital flows to emerging market (EM) countries and frequency of financial crises have imposed high welfare costs on the countries involved. The empirical literature provides, at best, a mixed picture on the relationship between long‐run EM country growth and financial integration. Meanwhile, the prevailing policy discourse regarding reform of the international financial system remains incomplete: the focus has largely been on either institutional and policy measures required of EM countries or international crisis‐resolution procedures. The role played by private financial markets and institutions in the developed world has not received adequate attention. This paper describes some of the structural features inherent in today's financial markets that directly contribute to the instability in EM capital flows.     

Dependence dynamics of stock markets during COVID-19

Stock markets have exhibited increased returns connectedness during the COVID-19 period. We examine the returns dependence among 42 stock markets classified under various emerging and developed groupings. We apply several dependence measures to examine the returns connectedness among the markets. Our results show that stock markets from the G-7 and Emerging Frontier and Asian (EFA) region exhibit high connectedness with other international markets, while Middle East and North African (MENA) and Latin American (LA) stock markets offer high diversification opportunities through low returns connectedness. The returns coherence of Central and East European (CEE) and G-7 markets increase significantly during the COVID-19 period which supports the hypothesis of contagion. However, during the pandemic MENA stock markets (excluding Greece) and most EFA markets (excluding China, Singapore and Korea) remain less cointegrated with other international equity markets. Our results have implications for individual and institutional investors, fund managers and other financial market stakeholders.     

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.     

Financial super-markets: size matters for asset trade

Empirically, demand and market size effects play an important role for international trade in assets and the determination of asset prices. Financial integration decreases the cost of capital, asset prices increase with investors base and market size determines international financial flows. We present a two-country model with an endogenous number of financial assets, where the interaction of a risk diversification motive and market segmentation explains those facts. In our set up, an imperfectly competitive structure of financial markets emerges naturally and provides a new source for home bias in equity holdings. Due to co-ordination failures, the extent of financial market incompleteness is inefficiently high in equilibrium.     

Financial crises and contagion vulnerability of MENA stock markets

This paper examines contagion vulnerability and the international and regional financial linkages of the MENA stock markets. The degree of vulnerability of those markets to global and regional financial crises will have important bearings on the respective economies' growth rate, and on their ability to diversify international and regional portfolios. Granger causality tests and impulse response functions reveal that while the GCC equity markets still offer international investors portfolio diversification potentials, those markets are relatively less vulnerable to global and regional financial crises. Moreover, even though the remaining MENA stock markets of Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia have matured and are now financially integrated with the world stock markets, they tend to exhibit more vulnerability to regional and international financial crises. Their vulnerability to international financial crises is due, on the one hand, to weak regional integration, and to greater economic and financial integration with the more advanced economies on the other.     

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.     

Bank risk-taking and market discipline: Evidence from CoCo bonds in Korea

We investigate whether the risk profile of contingent convertible (CoCo) bonds is well-priced by testing the sensitivity of bond spreads to bank asset volatility. While equity holders (bankers) have an incentive to make riskier investments to trigger the write-off, such risk-taking behavior can be contained if CoCo bond investors punish it by demanding higher returns. We have found that investors in the Korean financial market understand the risk profile of CoCo bonds and require higher returns for the additional bank risk, which suggests the presence of market discipline with regard to CoCo bonds.     

美国贸易政策不确定性与新兴经济体跨境股票资本流动北大核心CSSCI

本文使用1996年2月-2020年1月35个新兴经济体的跨境股票型基金微观数据,实证考察美国贸易政策不确定性对新兴经济体跨境股票资本流动的影响。结果表明:美国贸易政策不确定性上升会导致新兴经济体跨境股票型基金净资本流入下降,这一影响在2008年全球金融危机后更为显著。受国别因素影响,美国贸易政策不确定性的影响存在异质性。一国外汇风险暴露水平更高、国际金融一体化风险更大、与美国直接贸易联系更紧密,受到的美国贸易政策不确定性的影响更显著,更高的利率水平有利于缓解美国贸易政策不确定性的影响。从全球价值链视角来看,美国贸易政策不确定性上升对处于研发密集型行业下游和邮政通讯、金融商业服务等行业下游的经济体影响显著。渠道分析表明,全球投资者对新兴经济体的国别风险情绪变化是美国贸易政策不确定性冲击的重要传导渠道。进一步研究表明,中美贸易摩擦期间,主要受美国贸易政策不确定性影响,加征关税会显著降低新兴经济体跨境股票型基金净资本流入。在金融开放进程中,新兴经济体应防范外部不确定性引发的资本流动剧烈波动风险,保持宏观经济与金融市场稳定。     

Financial integration and international risk sharing

Conventional wisdom suggests that financial liberalization can help countries insure against idiosyncratic risk. There is little evidence, however, that countries have increased risk sharing despite widespread financial liberalization. We show that the key to understanding this puzzling observation is that conventional wisdom assumes frictionless international financial markets, while actual markets are far from frictionless: financial contracts are incomplete and contract enforceability is limited. When countries remove official capital controls, default risk is still present as an implicit barrier to capital flows. If default risk were eliminated, capital flows would be six times greater, and international risk sharing would increase substantially.     

Exchange rate regimes, globalisation, and the cost of capital in emerging markets

This paper presents a multifactor asset pricing model for currency, bond, and stock returns for ten emerging markets to investigate the effect of the exchange rate regime on the cost of capital and the integration of emerging financial markets. Our results suggest that a fixed exchange rate regime system can help reduce the cost of capital in emerging markets by reducing the currency risk premia demanded by foreign investors.     

Patterns of foreign direct investment in poor countries

This paper introduces endogenous adoption costs for productive assets in a Ramsey-type growth model with international capital flows. There are two classes of productive assets: owner-specific and location-specific. Adoption costs are an increasing function of the level of technology embodied in the investor's owner-specific assets and a declining function of the host country's location-specific assets. In this setting, the observed pattern of international capital flows is consistent with diminishing returns to capital. Further, our model predicts that the sectoral allocation of foreign direct investment is similar in rich and poor countries.     

The impact of crisis events on the stock returns volatility of international airlines

This paper adopts the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model to examine the relationship between the weekly returns of shares of the international airlines in 1996–2010. It also incorporates major international crisis events and observes the influence of different aspects on the volatility of returns of company shares. Different events exhibit significantly different regional volatility impulses in the countries in which the airlines are located. The Asian financial crisis enhances the returns volatility effects of Asian airline companies. The global financial crisis significantly intervenes with the returns volatility of airline companies around the world. The results suggest that major international events may all have risk effects on the returns on the share prices of airlines.     

Patterns of international capital raisings

This paper documents several new patterns associated with firms issuing stocks and bonds in foreign markets that motivate the need for and help guide the direction of future research. Three major patterns stand out. (1) A large and growing fraction of capital raisings, especially debt issuances, occurs in international markets, but a very small number of firms accounts for the bulk of international capital raisings, highlighting the cross-firm heterogeneity in financial globalization. (2) Changes in firm performance following equity and debt issuances in international markets are qualitatively similar to those following domestic issuances, suggesting that capital raisings abroad are not intrinsically different from those in domestic markets. (3) Firms continue to issue securities both abroad and at home after accessing international markets, suggesting that international and domestic markets are complements, not substitutes. Existing theories do not fully account for these patterns.     

Capital flows and capital goods

Studying the relation between equity market liberalization and imports of capital goods, we examine one channel through which international financial integration can promote growth. For the period 1980-1997, we find that after controlling for other policies and fundamentals, stock market liberalizations are associated with a significant increase in the share of imports of machinery and equipment. We hypothesize this can be attributed to the consequences of financial integration, which allows access to foreign capital, and provide evidence consistent with this channel. Our results suggest that increased access to international capital allows countries to enjoy the benefits embodied in capital goods.     

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.     

Credit constraints, equity market liberalizations and international trade

This paper provides evidence that credit constraints are an important determinant of international trade flows. I exploit shocks to the availability of external finance and examine the impact of equity market liberalizations on the export behavior of 91 countries in the 1980-1997 period. I show that liberalizations increase exports disproportionately more in financially vulnerable sectors that require more outside finance or employ fewer collateralizable assets. This result is not driven by cross-country differences in factor endowments and is independent of simultaneous trade policy reforms. Moreover, it obtains with equal strength in the full panel of countries as well as in both panel and event-study analyses of countries which removed capital controls during the sample period. Finally, the effects of liberalizations are more pronounced in economies with initially less active stock markets, indicating that foreign equity flows may substitute for an underdeveloped domestic financial system. Similarly, opening equity markets has a greater impact in the presence of higher trade costs caused by restrictive trade policies.     

International portfolios, capital accumulation and foreign assets dynamics

Despite the liberalization of capital flows among OECD countries, equity home bias remains sizable. We depart from the two familiar explanations of equity home bias: transaction costs that impede international diversification, and terms of trade responses to supply shocks that provide risk sharing, so that there is little incentive to hold diversified portfolios. We show that the interaction of the following ingredients generates a realistic equity home bias: capital accumulation and international trade in stocks and bonds. In our model, domestic stocks are used to hedge fluctuations in local wage income. Terms of trade risk is hedged using bonds denominated in local goods and in foreign goods. In contrast to related models, the low level of international diversification does not depend on strongly countercyclical terms of trade. The model also reproduces the cyclical dynamics of foreign asset positions and of international capital flows.     

Equity volatility,bond yields,and yield spreads

This study examines the impact of implied and contemporaneous equity market volatility on Treasury yields, corporate bond yields, and yield spreads over Treasuries. The CBOE VIX is the measure of implied volatility, and the measure of contemporaneous volatility is constructed using intraday squared S&P 500 returns. We find that bond yields and spreads respond to changes in equity market volatility in a manner consistent with a flight‐to‐quality effect. Both short‐ and long‐term Treasury yields fall in response to increases in implied volatility, and the yield curve flattens modestly. Yields on short‐term investment grade bonds fall in response to contemporaneous volatility shocks, while long‐term spreads on low‐quality issues widen. This indicates that investors “look ahead” in anticipation of changes in equity market volatility but respond more strongly to changes in contemporaneous market activity. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark     

Capital liberalization and the US external imbalance

Differences in financial systems are often named as a prime candidate for the current state of global imbalances. This paper focuses on cross-country heterogeneity in access to international financial markets that derives from the presence of capital controls and argues that the process of capital liberalization over the past decades can explain a substantial fraction of US net external liabilities. We present a simple two-country model with an internationally traded bond, in which capital controls are reflected in the presence of borrowing and lending constraints on that bond. In a US versus the rest of the world (RoW) scenario, we perform experiments that are largely consistent with countries' liberalization experiences. A reduction in the RoW's controls on capital outflows and/or a tightening in the RoW's borrowing constraint enable the US economy to better insure against consumption risk relative to the rest of the world, and therefore decrease its motives for precautionary asset holdings relative to the rest of the world. As a result of these asymmetric shifts in countries' barriers to capital mobility, the US runs a long run external deficit.