Illusory profitability of technical analysis in emerging foreign exchange markets

We conduct an extensive examination of the profitability of technical analysis in ten emerging foreign exchange markets. Studying 25,988 trading strategies for emerging foreign exchange markets, we find that the best rules can sometimes generate an annual mean excess return of more than 30%. Based on standard tests, we find hundreds to thousands of seemingly significant profitable strategies. However, almost all of these profits vanish once the data snooping bias is taken into account. Overall, we show that the profitability of technical analysis is illusory.     

Estimating the proportion of informed and speculative traders in financial markets: evidence from exchange rate

Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination - We study the Glosten–Milgrom model and estimate the proportion of informed traders or speculators using bid–ask spread and price...     

Credit allocation and the financial crisis: evidence from Spanish companies

The worldwide financial crisis of 2007–2008 raised serious concerns about the soundness of banks’ activities and about the extent to which banking regulation should supervise banks’ investment decisions. We contribute to this topic by examining the Spanish case, which has been emblematic of the bubble and burst dynamics in the credit market. In particular, we study the allocation of bank credit among Spanish companies from 1999 to 2014, showing that larger companies accumulated greater amounts of bank loans per unit of total assets, thus leading to a notable concentration. We also find that, during the Spanish boom period, bank loans shifted from the manufacturing to the construction industry, and in particular to the largest companies of the latter sector. This happened in spite of the high leverage of large construction firms, which was increasing also due to their growing debt. We argue that the higher operating benefits, reflecting the increase of the housing price during the boom period, overvalued construction firms as potential borrowers. The bankruptcy of several large construction companies during the Spanish crisis supports the need for monitoring and regulation, to avoid an excessive concentration of bank credit to a few large companies, especially if they belong to a specific sector.

     

Debt dependence and corporate performance in a financial crisis: evidence from the sub-prime mortgage crisis

This study examines the effect of corporate debt dependence on the differential impact of the sub-prime mortgage crisis on corporate performance. We find that the higher the debt dependence the greater the decrease in corporate performance from the pre-crisis to the crisis period. For high-debt firms, we find that the higher the new debt borrowed during the crisis period, the lower the corporate performance. However, we find no significant relation between new debt borrowed and corporate performance for low debt firms during the crisis period.     

The global financial crisis: Lessons for European integration

The EU's limited fiscal capacity has proven to be the most critical constraint in responding to the global financial crisis in a coordinated manner. The EU does not have enough resources to rescue the troubled financial institutions and member states. This leads to a nationalization of rescue operations, which undermines the Single European Market and requires IMF involvement with respect to member states in distress. The EU must also complete the lacking elements of the Single European Market architecture (such as European financial supervision) and help in strengthening global policy and regulatory coordination.     

Gradual financial integration and macroeconomic fluctuations in emerging market economies: evidence from China

Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination - This paper extends the conventional DSGE literature by developing a New Keynesian DSGE model featuring imperfect financial markets with various...     

FDI spillovers and firm productivity during crisis: Empirical evidence from transition economies

Most studies on foreign direct investment (FDI) are nested within periods of economic prosperity. Our study investigates the impact of FDI spillovers on productivity during the global financial crisis (2006–2014) and the accompanying credit shortage. A dynamic panel analysis of firm-level data from two neighbouring but distinct transition economies, Croatia and Slovenia, reveals that the impact of the crisis may go as far as halting the process of learning through spillovers if firms have difficulties in accessing external funds. The implications of the study may prove particularly beneficial to policy makers grappling with the economic crisis following the COVID-19 pandemic.     

Accounting and capital markets: a survey of the European evidence

The relationship between accounting information and capital markets has been the subject of numerous studies, especially in the US. The purpose of this article is to examine the corresponding evidence in Europe. This review classifies the European literature into three groups: studies of the market reaction to newly released accounting information; studies of the long-term association between stock returns and accounting numbers; studies devoted to the use of accounting data by investors and to the impact of market pressure on accounting choices. The paper reviews and summarizes the main results related to each of these topics. It also addresses some methodological issues and provides suggestions for future research.     

Noise trading and autocorrelation interactions in the foreign exchange market: Evidence from developed and emerging economies

This paper seeks to empirically determine whether feedback trading strategies result in stabilization or destabilization in the foreign exchange market and if such strategies are a distinctive characteristic of an emerging economy or they are a common element to both developed and emerging economies. These hypotheses are tested via the use of a feedback model augmented with a generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) process for modeling the errors. The results suggest presence of both positive and negative feedback trading and asymmetric behavior in both types of economies. Irrespective of the nature of feedback trading, presence of asymmetric behavior implies that market traders rely on central banks to intervene so they can realize short-term profits. Finally, in cases of a positive first-order autoregressive parameter presence of the bandwagon effect is implied, whereby past currency movements are followed by expectations of currency movements in the same direction.

The dynamic relationship between stock,bond and foreign exchange markets

This paper investigates whether the deviation of a currency from its fundamentally determined rate of return affects the relationship between interest rates and stock market yields. A time-varying transition probability, the Markov-switching vector autoregressive (MS-VAR) model, is utilized for this purpose. Wald and likelihood ratio tests are computed and used as model adequacy measures. In order to analyze the link between the variables, impulse–response functions are employed. A sticky price exchange rate model is used to show the fundamentally determined rate of return of currencies. States are defined as either overvalued or undervalued, depending on the position of the observed exchange rate compared to its fundamentally determined rate. The model is applied to four major currencies: the Australian Dollar, the Canadian Dollar, the Japanese Yen, and the British Pound. Transition between the states is linked to the risk-adjusted excess return (the Sharpe ratio) of the debt and equity markets of the respective currencies in order to understand whether over- and undervaluation is connected to the returns in these markets. The results provide evidence that the relationship between economic fundamentals and nominal exchange rates are subject to change depending on the over- or undervaluation of the currencies relative to their fundamentally determined rate of return. An extension of this result shows that the Sharpe ratios of debt and equity investments in the currencies influence the evolution of the transitional dynamics of the exchange rates’ deviation from their fundamental values.     

Direct and indirect effects of FDI in emerging European markets: A survey and meta-analysis

We review a large body of literature dealing with the effects of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) on economies during their transformation from a command economic system toward a market system. We report the results of a meta-analysis based on the literature on externalities from FDI. The studies on emerging European markets covered in our survey report direct and indirect FDI effects weakening over time, similarly as in other FDI destination countries. This is imputable to a publication bias that is detected and to the fact that more sophisticated methods and more controls can be used once a sufficient time span is available. Panel studies are likely to find relatively lower spillover effects. The choice of the research design (definition of firm performance and foreign firm presence) matters. More specific to the sampled studies is the role played by forward and backward spillovers which dominate other channels in driving FDI externalities.     

Intraday effect of news on emerging European forex markets: An event study analysis

We analyze the impact of euro zone/German and U.S. macroeconomic news announcements and the communication of the monetary policy settings of the ECB and the Fed on the forex markets of new EU members. We employ an event study methodology to analyze intraday data from 2011–2015. Our comprehensive analysis of the wide variety of macroeconomic information during the post-GFC period shows that: (i) macroeconomic announcements affect the value of the new EU country exchange rates, (ii) the origin of the announcement matters, (iii) the type of announcement matters, (iv) different types of news (good, bad or neutral) result in different reactions, (v) markets react not only after the news release but also before, (vi) when the U.S. dollar is the base currency the impact of the news is larger than in the case of the euro, (vii) announcements on ECB monetary policy result in stronger effects than those of the Fed, (viii) temporary inefficiencies are present in new EU country forex markets, (ix) new EU country exchange rates react differently to positive US news during the EU debt crisis compared to the rest of the period.     

Timing of price clustering and trader behavior in the foreign exchange market: evidence from Taiwan

In this paper, I use a unique proprietary dataset from the foreign exchange market to examine the existing hypotheses on price clustering. I find that market uncertainty plays an important role in price clustering. Moreover, since trading behavior changes under different market conditions, market timing also affects the likelihood of price clustering. The results support both the price resolution hypothesis (Ball et al. J Futures Mark 5:29–43, 1985) and the negotiation hypothesis (Harris Rev Financ Stud 4:389–415, 1991). Since the data covers the interbank foreign exchange market, which is the market for the professional bank dealers, the attraction hypothesis is less likely to be a plausible explanation for price clustering in the foreign exchange market.     

The impact of macro news and central bank communication on emerging European forex markets

We employ a two-stage empirical strategy to analyze the impact of macroeconomic news and central bank communication on the exchange rates of three Central and Eastern European (CEE) currencies against the euro. First we estimate the nominal equilibrium exchange rate based on a monetary model. Second, we employ a high-frequency GARCH model to estimate the effects of the news and communication along with the estimated exchange rate misalignment on the exchange rate as well as its volatility. The analysis is performed during the pre-crisis (2004–2007) and crisis (2008–2009) periods. CEE currencies react to macroeconomic news during both periods in an intuitive manner that corresponds to exchange rate-related theories. However, the responsiveness of the currencies to central bank verbal interventions becomes important only during the crisis period.     

Entrepreneur subsidiary of business groups from emerging markets: a multi-level perspective

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal - This study examines the effects of firm resources on entrepreneur subsidiaries of business groups. Resource-based theory is the foundation...     

Inflation, output, and stock prices: Evidence from two major emerging markets

Research in economics and finance documents a puzzling negative relationship between stock returns and inflation rates in markets of industrialized economies. The present study investigates this relationship for Korea and Mexico. We show that the negative relationship between the real stock returns and unexpected inflation persists after purging inflation of the effects of the real economic activity. Johansen and Juselius cointegration tests verify that the long-run equilibrium between stock prices and general price levels is weak. However, in both economies, stock prices and general price levels seem to show a strong long-run equilibrium with the real economic activity. This paper benefited from the constructive suggestions of an anonymous referee. The remaining errors are the authors’ responsibility. Financial support from the Dr. Robert B. Pamplin, Jr., School of Business Administration, University of Portland, is greatly appreciated.     

Foreign exchange markets in South-East Asia 1990–2004: An empirical analysis of spillovers during crisis and non-crisis periods

The East Asian crisis of 1997 sparked an extensive literature in an effort to explain the causes and spread of heightened foreign exchange (FX) market pressures in the region. In this paper, we model FX movements and calculate spillover effects covering the extended period between 1990 and 2004. Using Markov switching vector autoregressions, we find evidence that FX correlations vary across crisis and non-crisis states, a result that bears implications for international portfolio diversification and reserve pooling. Even though the direction of effects does not follow discernible patterns, it is clear from the data that contagion effects are present.     

Agent-based financial markets and New Keynesian macroeconomics: a synthesis

We combine a simple agent-based model of financial markets and a New Keynesian macroeconomic model with bounded rationality via two straightforward channels. The result is a macroeconomic model that allows for the endogenous development of business cycles and stock price bubbles. We show that market sentiments exert important influence on the macroeconomy: Impulse-response functions of macroeconomic variables become more volatile which makes the effect of a given shock hard to predict. We also analyze the impact of different types of financial transaction taxes that are currently debated among policy makers (FTT, FAT, progressive FAT) and find that such taxes are well suited to stabilize the economy and raise funds from the financial sector as a contribution to the enormous costs created during the recent crisis. Our simulations suggest that the FTT leads to higher tax revenues and better stabilization results then the FAT. However, the FTT might also create huge distortion if set too high, a threat which the FAT does not imply.     

The heterogeneous expectations hypothesis: Some evidence from the lab

This paper surveys learning-to-forecast experiments (LtFEs) with human subjects to test theories of expectations and learning. Subjects must repeatedly forecast a market price, whose realization is an aggregation of individual expectations. Emphasis is given to how individual forecasting rules interact at the micro-level and which structure they cocreate at the aggregate, macro-level. In particular, we focus on the question wether the evidence from laboratory experiments is consistent with heterogeneous expectations.