Evaluating international consumption risk sharing gains: An asset return view

International consumption risk sharing studies often generate counterfactual implications for asset return behavior with potentially misleading results. We address this contradiction using data moments of consumption and asset returns to fit a canonical international consumption risk sharing framework. Introducing persistent consumption risk, we find that its correlation across countries is more important for risk sharing than that of transitory risk. To identify these risk components, we jointly exploit the comovement of equity returns and consumption. This identification implies high correlations in persistent consumption risk, suggesting a strong degree of existing risk sharing despite low consumption correlations in the data.     

Financial Integration of Large- and Small-Cap Stocks in Emerging Markets

This study examines the financial integration of large- and small-cap stocks in twenty-three emerging markets to determine their degree of market integration with the world market. The international asset pricing model cannot be rejected for most large-cap stock portfolios, but it is rejected for small-cap stock portfolios. The findings also demonstrate that super-large-cap stocks have the fewest pricing errors and their global financial integration has increased in recent years. In sum, the empirical results indicate that global market integration is primarily associated with the super-large-cap stocks of large emerging markets.     

The pricing of sentiment risk in European stock markets

This paper studies whether sentiment is rewarded with a significant risk premium in the European stock markets. We examine several sentiment proxies and identify the Economic Sentiment Indicator from the EU Commission as the most relevant sentiment proxy for our sample. The analysis is performed for the contemporaneous excess returns of EA-11 stock markets in the period from February 1999 to September 2015. We apply a conditional multi-beta pricing model in order to track the variation of the sentiment risk premium over time. The results demonstrate a positive significant relationship between sentiment and contemporaneous excess returns which is consistent with previous studies. The calculated sentiment risk premium is significant as well but negative implying that an investment in EA-11 countries over the examined time period – that is bearing sentiment risk – would have been unattractive to the investors on average.     

The world ex ante risk premium: an empirical investigation

A number of recent papers have focused on testing the linearity restrictions implied by international asset pricing models. The tests, however, have not addressed an additional restriction implied by the models; namely, that the risk premium on the world portfolio is positive. This study provides a direct assessment of this restriction. The evidence indicates that the ex ante world market risk premium can be negative. The results are robust to market proxies that are hedged and unhedged with respect to currency risk. Subperiod analysis indicates that the rejection of the positive risk premium restriction is driven by the first half of the sample period.     

Market integration and currency risk in Asian emerging markets

Most of the Asian emerging stock markets started to liberalize their markets in 1990s. In this paper, I examine whether those markets have become integrated with world stock market since the 1990s by estimating and testing a dynamic version of international CAPM (ICAPM) in the absence of purchasing power parity (PPP) using a parsimonious multivariate GARCH-in-Mean (MGARCH-M) approach. I also investigate to what extent the liberalization process has affected the cost of capital and price volatility for each market. The empirical results show that Philippines was segmented from the world stock market before its liberalization date, but no evidence of market segmentation is found for the other five markets (India, Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Thailand) before their liberalization dates. However, all six markets have become integrated after opening up their markets to foreign investors. In addition, the estimated risk premia are lower after the liberalization, indicating that the liberalization process has reduced the cost of capital for their domestic firms. Moreover, there is no evidence of extra market volatility introduced by capital market liberalization, and on the contrary, the markets have become more stabilized through the liberalization process.     

Local risk factors in emerging markets: Are they separately priced?

We provide new evidence on the pricing of local risk factors in emerging stock markets. We investigate whether there is a significant local currency premium together with a domestic market risk premium in equity returns within a partial integration asset pricing model. Given previous evidence on currency risk, we conduct empirical tests in a conditional setting with time-varying prices of risk. Our main results support the hypothesis of a significant exchange risk premium related to the local currency risk. Exchange rate and domestic market risks are priced separately for our sample of seven emerging markets. The empirical evidence also suggests that although statistically significant, local currency risk is on average smaller than domestic market risk but it increases substantially during crises periods, when it can be almost as large as market risk. Disentangling these two factors is thus important in tests of international asset pricing for emerging markets.     

Relationship between franking credits and the market risk premium: a comment

This paper examines two arguments presented in Gray and Hall (2006). First, that the generally used estimate of 0.06 for the market risk premium within the Officer version of the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) and the generally used estimate of 0.50 for the parameter ‘gamma’ within the Officer framework are jointly inconsistent with evidence concerning the market risk premium in the standard version of the CAPM. Second, that the first two of these parameter estimates are also jointly inconsistent with the observed cash dividend yield on the Australian market. To resolve these problems, Gray and Hall recommend setting gamma to zero. The present paper shows that the first argument does not account for the fact that imputation induces a reduction in the market risk premium as defined in the standard version of the CAPM. The present paper also shows that both arguments identify a problem that characterizes only parts of the Officer framework, and these parts are not generally used in Australia. Therefore, rather than suggesting that gamma should be zero, Gray and Hall's analysis identifies parts of the Officer framework that should be avoided.     

The Effects of Liberalisation on Market and Currency Risk in the European Union

This paper investigates the effects of liberalisation on the pricing of market and currency risk for a number of financial markets in the European Union (EU). An International Asset Pricing Model with a multivariate GARCH‐in‐Mean specification and time‐varying prices of risk is used for the four markets with the largest capitalisation in the EU. Only one price of market risk exists and international investors are rewarded for their exposure to currency risk. The evidence shows that all prices of risk are time‐varying and have been decreasing during the process of liberalisation. There is also evidence that markets react to period of uncertainty in the process toward the completion of liberalisation. In addition, the operation of the European Monetary System has generated lower covariances. As a consequence, total risk premia have declined in the last decade.     

An options-based approach to evaluating the risk of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac assume a significant amount of interest and prepayment risk and all of the credit risk for about half of the $8 trillion U.S. residential mortgage market. Their hybrid government-private status, and the perception that they are too big to fail, make them a potentially large, but largely unaccounted for, risk to the federal government. Measuring the size and risk of this liability is technically difficult, but important for the debate over the appropriate regulation of these institutions. Here we take an options pricing approach to evaluating these costs and risks. Under the base case assumptions, the estimated value of the guarantees is $7.9 billion over 10 years, with a combined .5 percent value at risk of $122 billion. We evaluate the sensitivity of these estimates to various modeling assumptions, and also to the regulatory regime, including forbearance policies and capital requirements. The analysis highlights the benefits, but also the challenges, of taking an options-based approach to evaluating the value of federal credit guarantees.     

Determinants of risk in the banking sector during the European Financial Crisis

Risk assessment in the banking sector has been a prominent topic in the banking literature and has gained attention especially since the recent financial crises. In particular, the European crisis, which was the first since the formation of the Eurozone, underlined a number of significant problems and increased concerns on the tail or crash risk of banks. In the present study, we seek to examine whether information asymmetry, the importance of banks in the financial system and systemic risk play significant roles in the evolution of stock crashes in the banking sector. Information asymmetry is proxied by opacity, the importance of a bank in a financial network is proxied by network centrality, and systemic risk is proxied by clustering. The research framework considers a number of regulatory, reporting and financial market factors that have also been determined to relate to stock crashes and shows that all of the above factors are related to (idiosyncratic) stock crash risk under specific conditions.     

国际板建设的理论、制度和操作层面障碍

本文讨论了国际板建设涉及的三方面的理论问题,以及五个具体操作层面的问题。这三个方面的关系问题是国际板与香港国际金融中心的地位关系问题、国际板与外汇管理制度的关系问题以及国际板与国内板的关系问题。五个方面具体操作层面的问题包括国际板的保荐、发行和审批流程问题、国际板的招股书披露要求问题、国际板的适用财务准则问题、国际板的上市规则问题以及国际板的公司治理问题。     

波动率风险及风险价格——来自中国A股市场的证据

本文应用Fama-Macbeth估计方法,以1997年2月至2009年6月中国A股股票为样本,考察股票市场波动率风险及其风险价格的特征。研究表明:波动率风险是一个显著的横截面定价因子,其风险价格为负,该结论不受流动性及市场偏度因子、待检资产改变、波动率模型设定的影响;在资产定价模型中引入波动率风险因子有利于解释规模效应和账面市值比效应异象。波动率的风险因子可以涵盖部分宏观经济变量的定价信息,规模因子是波动率风险因子的代理变量。     

Dual-listings on international exchanges: the case of emerging markets' stocks

This paper examines the effects on stock returns of dual-listing on an international exchange. My sample consists of 70 firms from 10 emerging markets that dual-listed on the NYSE, NASDAQ and SEAQ-I (London) over the period 1991–1995. I evaluate whether an international dual-listing has any significant effect on returns, for the particular case of emerging markets' firms, and I proceed to investigate whether there is evidence to support an International Asset Pricing based explanation. In addition I compare the impact of US and London SEAQ-I listings. My results confirm previous empirical findings on international listings: the firms in my sample experience significant positive abnormal returns before listing and a significant decline in returns following listing. Evidence seems to be supportive of the segmentation hypothesis: dual-listing effects are more pronounced for emerging markets' listings and that pattern is similar across exchanges.
G15     

C-CAPM Refinements and the Cross-Section of Returns

This paper studies if the consumption-based asset pricing model can explain the cross-section of expected returns. The CRRA model and several refinements (habit persistence and idiosyncratic shocks) all imply that the conditional expected return is linearly increasing in the asset’s conditional covariance with consumption growth. Results from quarterly data on the 25 Fama-French portfolios suggest that the model has serious problems: there are large and systematic pricing errors. In addition, the estimated time-varying effective risk aversion coefficients appear implausible and are unrelated with most candidates for habit persistence and idiosyncratic risk.     

人民币国际化与上海国际金融中心建设

本文提出了人民币国际化进程中应当把握的若干重点,2020年基本建成上海国际金融中心、实现人民币基本国际化的主要标志和战略措施,提出了近期推进上海国际金融中心建设与人民币国际化的若干对策建议。     

Financial acumen, women speculators, and the Royal African company during the South Sea bubble

Price bubbles provide a unique opportunity to study the financial acumen of shareholders. We focus on the 1720 South Sea episode as experienced by the Royal African Company whose stock was more speculative than other joint stocks. During 1720 the company had a new large stock issue. This paper examines the financial acumen of those women who traded senior and engrafted stock across 1720. We find that depending on the pricing regime, these women at worst broke even on their activities or had positive speculative gains. Our findings are consistent with a growing literature on the positive link between gender, capital gains and financial markets.     

Re-examination of the historical equity risk premium in Australia

In light of the ongoing debate over the value of the equity risk premium, its increasing use in the regulatory setting, and the impact of dividend imputation on the premium, this paper presents a timely new look at the historical equity risk premium in Australia, and provides an improved understanding of the historical record. We document concerns about data quality that become increasingly important the further back in time one looks. In particular, there are sufficient question marks over the quality of data prior to 1958 to warrant any estimates based thereon to be treated with caution. Accordingly, we present a new set of estimates of the historical equity risk premium corresponding to periods of increasing data quality but of decreasing sample size. Relative to bonds (bills), the equity premium has averaged 6.3 per cent (6.8 per cent) per annum over 1958–2005, which is a period of relatively good data quality. Together with other results in the paper, the findings reveal a historical estimate that is substantially less than widely cited historical studies would otherwise indicate. We reconcile prior evidence through documenting a dividend adjustment that has typically been overlooked. We also provide estimates that incorporate an adjustment for imputation credits.     

Enterprise risk management in financial groups: analysis of risk concentration and default risk

In financial groups, enterprise risk management is becoming increasingly important in controlling and managing the different independent legal entities in the group. The aim of this paper is to assess and relate risk concentration and joint default probabilities of the group’s legal entities in order to achieve a more comprehensive picture of a financial group’s risk situation. We further examine the impact of the type of dependence structure on results by comparing linear and nonlinear dependencies using different copula concepts under certain distributional assumptions. Our results show that even if financial groups with different dependence structures do have the same risk concentration factor, joint default probabilities of different sets of subsidiaries can vary tremendously.

In America's thrall: the effects of the US market and US security characteristics on Australian stock returns

Can Australian equity returns be modelled by ‘home‐grown’ factors? We examine the indigenous capital asset pricing model, the indigenous Fama–French three‐factor model, and extensions to the latter, and find them all wanting. We find evidence of domestic market segmentation in Australia. For the smallest firms, all the models we study fail. For the largest Australian firms, we find that the US Fama–French three factors (downloaded from French's website: http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pages/faculty/ken.french/ ) provide a successful model of Australian returns. It is as if the largest firms in the Australian market are simply part of the larger US market.     

Calendar effects and the pricing of risk: the UK evidence

For some time there has been a puzzle surrounding the seasonal behaviour of stock returns. This paper demonstrates that there is an asymmetric relationship between risk and return across the different months of the year. The paper finds that systematic risk is only priced during the months of January, April and July. Variance risk and firm size are priced during several months of the year including January. An analysis of the relative behaviour of size based securities reveals that firm capitalization makes a valuable contribution to the magnitude of risk premiums.