Are regulations the answer for emerging stock markets? Evidence from the Czech Republic and Poland

Does the emergence of a stock market require a well-developed legal and/or regulatory system? Although historical work by Neal and Davis [Neal, L., & Davis, L. (2005). The evolution of the rules and regulations of the first emerging markets: The London, New York, and Paris stock exchanges, 1792–1914. Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, 45, 296–311] and Stringham [Stringham, E. (2003). The extralegal development of securities trading in seventeenth century Amsterdam. Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, 43, 321–344] suggests that securities markets have successfully developed with little government oversight, numerous authors [including Black, B. (2001). The legal and institutional preconditions for strong securities markets. University of California Law Angeles Law Review, 48, 781–855; Coffee, J. (1999). Privatization and corporate governance: The lessons from securities market failure. Journal of Corporation Law, 25, 1–39; Frye, T. (2000). Brokers and bureaucrats: Building market institutions in Russia. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; Glaeser, E., Johnson, S., & Shleifer, A. (2001). Coase versus the Coasians. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 116, 853–899; Mlčoch, L. (2000). Restructuring of property rights: An institutional view. In L. Mlčoch et al. (Eds.), Economic and Social Changes in Czech Society After 1989. Prague: The Karolinum Press; Pistor, K. (2001). Law as a determinant for equity market development – the experience of transition economies. In Peter Murrell (Ed.), The Value of Law in Transition Economies (pp. 249–287). Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press; Stiglitz, J. (1999). Whither reform. Ten years of the transition. Keynote Address, Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics, Washington, DC, April 28–30, 1999; Zhang, X. (2006). Financial market governance in developing countries: Getting the political underpinnings right. Journal of Developing Societies, 2, 169–196] argue that the Czech Republic and other Eastern European governments need more regulation for their newly created stock markets. They maintain that the Warsaw Stock Exchange, which is seen as more regulated, has outperformed the Prague Stock Exchange which is seen as largely unregulated. Thus increased regulations are a key to increased performance. This article, however, maintains that the evidence from the Czech experience has been misinterpreted. This article provides an in depth case study of the Czech stock market and finds that (a) Czech capital markets have been hindered by government intervention from their beginning, (b) that the evidence on Poland's superior performance is not as strong as suggested, and (c) that Czech regulators seem to be unqualified, lack the proper incentives, and are unlikely to benefit the market. Under these circumstances it appears that Neal and Davis (2005:311) are correct that increased government involvement is unlikely to improve the situation.     

The profitability of moving average trading rules in BRICS and emerging stock markets

Technical analysis and trading systems have been widely used by practitioners in financial markets. Since some academic studies have highlighted that these tools can generate positive alphas when compared with a buy-and-hold strategy, we studied the main stocks of the BRICS and emerging markets. We considered the period from 2000 to 2015 and observed different combinations of moving average strategies and periods. The main results indicate that, for some countries, there is a combination of periods for moving averages producing better outcomes.     

Oil prices,stock returns,and exchange rates: Empirical evidence from China and the United States

Employing the diagonal BEKK model as well as the dynamic impulse response functions, this study investigates the time-varying trilateral relationships among real oil prices, exchange rate changes, and stock market returns in China and the U.S. from February 1991 to December 2015. We highlight several key observations: (i) oil prices respond positively and significantly to aggregate demand shocks; (ii) positive oil supply shocks adversely and significantly affect the Chinese stock market; (iii) oil price shocks persistently and significantly impact the trade-weighted US dollar index negatively; (iv) the US and China stock markets correlate positively just as the dollar index and the exchange rate does; (v) a significant parallel inverse relation exists between the US stock market and the dollar and between the China stock market and the exchange rate; and (vi) the Chinese stock market is more volatile and responsive to aggregate demand and oil price shocks than the US stock market in recent years.     

Value at risk and return in Chinese and the US stock markets: Double long memory and fractional cointegration

Given that the United States is an engine of global stock market while China is the largest emerging market with a cornucopia of anomalies in particular, it is vital to investigate the risk-return relationship in the two markets. This paper brings new insights not only into risk-return tradeoff, but also to the leverage effect, with the application of the fractionally co-integrated vector auto-regression (FCVAR) model capturing the fractional cointegrated relationship and long memory property. Results show that China stock markets own the property of double long memory but the US markets don’t. Most of all, in the US market, a positive risk-return tradeoff exists for the whole sample while after the crisis, even we find the negative relation, it’s not a volatility feedback effect but low risk and high returns. However, there is only a volatility feedback effect in China stock markets. Besides, there is a leverage effect in the US market, while Chinese market exhibits a reverse one, another anomaly, indicating significant difference in the two markets again.     

中国股票市场风险和收益风格效应的非参数检验

本文利用Kendall协同系数检验考察我国股票市场风险和收益的风格效应。通过实证研究首次发现各风格指数的收益率、总风险及指数特有风险均具有明显的分层结构,风格效应显著。对影响风险和收益的风格因素进行的分析表明:股票风险受规模因素的影响十分明显;而股票回报率受价值因素的影响比较显著,受规模因素的影响不明显。并进一步用Spearman相关系数考察了风险与收益之间的秩相关性。本文研究结果对资产配置和风险监管等问题具有参考价值。     

Low interest rate policy and the use of reserve requirements in emerging markets

This paper sheds light on the link between the interest rate policy in large advanced economies with international funding and reserve currencies (the United States and the euro area) and the use of reserve requirements in emerging markets. Using reserve requirement data for 28 emerging markets from 1998 to 2012, we provide evidence that emerging market central banks tend to raise reserve requirements when interest rates in international funding markets decline or financial inflows accelerate, most likely to preserve financial stability. In contrast, when global liquidity risk rises and funding from the large advanced economies dries up, emerging markets lower reserve requirements.     

Foreign entry and the Turkish banking system in 2000s

In recent decades, the role of foreign ownership in banking sectors, and especially the developing ones has become a frequently investigated topic among finance scholars. Similar to many other developing countries seeking to attract foreign direct investments, Turkey has experienced a great increase in the number of foreign-owned banks in the sector following the 2000 and 2001 economic and financial crises. Using panel data regression analysis for a sample of 31 deposit banks operating in Turkey, for the period 2002–2012, we find that foreign ownership has a negative and statistically significant impact on accounting profits, proxied by the ratio of earnings before taxes to total assets. However, contrary to expectations, three other dependent variables representing interest rate spreads, non-lending activities and short term risk, were not found to be significantly associated with foreign ownership.     

Linkages between emerging and developed equity markets: Empirical evidence in the PMG framework

This paper empirically investigates the international equity market causal links between Central and South-Eastern Europe, on the one hand, and developed countries (Western Europe and the United States), on the other hand, over the monthly sample period spanning from October 2000 to September 2012. Unlike previous studies, we use the pooled mean group (PMG) approach of Pesaran et al. (1999), which is suitable to estimate dynamic heterogeneous panels to draw reliable conclusions. After cointegration is found between the stock markets of interest, the PMG estimates show evidence of each market's sensitivity to the fluctuations of the other markets over both the short- and long-run, supporting the feedback hypothesis. The impact of developed markets on emerging markets is more important than that of emerging markets on developed markets and the bidirectional impact is higher between emerging and Western European markets than between these emerging markets and the United States. These conclusions are robust to an alternative specification, which supports the view that the stock markets are closely interlinked. The findings are of great interest and have important implications for policy makers, investors, and practitioners.     

Speculative behavior and the dynamics of interacting stock markets

We develop a simple agent-based financial market model in which heterogeneous speculators apply technical and fundamental analysis to trade in two different stock markets. Speculators׳ strategy/market selections are repeated at each time step and depend on predisposition effects, herding behavior and market circumstances. Simulations reveal that our model is able to explain a number of nontrivial statistical properties of and between international stock markets, including bubbles and crashes, fat-tailed return distributions, volatility clustering, persistent trading volume, coevolving stock prices and cross-correlated volatilities. Against this background, our model may be deemed to have been validated.     

Time-frequency effect of crude oil and exchange rates on stock markets in BRICS countries: Evidence from wavelet quantile regression analysis

This study examines the effects of oil prices and exchange rates on stock market returns in BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, China, India and South Africa) from a time–frequency perspective over the period 2009–2020. We use wavelet decomposition series to develop a threshold rolling window quantile regression to detect time–frequency effects at various scales. The empirical results are as follows. First, our findings confirm that the effects of both crude oil prices and exchange rates on BRICS stock returns are asymmetric. Positive shocks of crude oil have a greater impact on a bull market, whereas negative shocks have a greater impact on a bear market. Second, there is a short-term enhancement effect of crude oil and exchange rate on BRICS stock markets. In addition, volatility in the macro financial environment also exacerbates the impacts of oil prices and exchange rates on the stock market, and these fluctuations are heterogeneous. Overall, these findings provide useful insights for international investors and policy makers.     

The impact of policy,political and economic uncertainty on corporate capital investment in the emerging markets of Eastern Europe and Turkey

This paper examines the impact of policy, political, and economic uncertainty on firm-level capital investment in Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Russia, and Turkey. Our results indicate an insignificant relationship between uncertainty and investment in these countries. This finding is robust to six different uncertainty measures, including time-series uncertainty indices that track either local or global uncertainty and country-level electoral activities. The results are also robust to two different proxies for measuring corporate investment. Overall, the real-option mechanism in which firms delay irreversible investment in uncertain times does not hold in the emerging markets of Eastern Europe and Turkey.     

New insights into the role of global factors in BRICS stock markets: A quantile cointegration approach

Because of the acceleration in marketization and globalization, stock markets in the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) countries are affected by various global factors, for example, oil prices, gold prices, global stock market volatility, global economic policy uncertainty, financial stress, and investor sentiment. This paper offers new insights into the short- and long-run linkages between global factors and BRICS stock markets by applying the quantile autoregressive distributed lags (QARDL) approach. This novel methodology enables us to test short- and long-run linkages accounting for distributional asymmetry. That is, the nonlinear dynamic relationship between the global factors and BRICS stock prices depends on market conditions. Our empirical results show that the effects of gold prices and global stock market volatility on BRICS stock prices are more significant in the long run than in the short run. A decrease in global stock market volatility is associated with higher stock prices, while gold prices demonstrate upward co-movement in dynamic correlations with stock markets. Irrational factors, such as economic policy uncertainty, financial stress, and investor sentiment, play a critical role in the short term, and negative interdependence is dominant. Finally, the rolling-window estimation technique is used to examine time-varying patterns between major global factors and BRICS stock markets.     

Business Models for Frugal Innovation in Emerging Markets: The Case of the Medical Device and Laboratory Equipment Industry

This study investigates business models for frugal innovation (i.e. a specific form of resource-constrained innovation) in the medical device and laboratory equipment industry in the context of emerging markets. Based on original data from five case studies, we investigate how firms can set up value creation and value capturing mechanisms to reach new customer segments in remote rural areas with unprecedented value propositions. With this research, we contribute to the literature on frugal innovation and business models in emerging markets. It is among the first empirical studies to apply a fine-grained perspective on resource-constrained innovation in emerging markets. In doing so, we focus on its most disruptive form, which is when these innovations entail entirely new applications. We advance and detail the value proposition for frugal innovation in these industries and argue that frugal innovation create new markets. Further, we show how firms set up their value creation and value capturing mechanisms to achieve the value proposition and identify two distinct Research & Development (R&D) strategies for frugal innovation.     

Banking efficiency in South East Europe: Evidence for financial crises and the gap between new EU members and candidate countries

In this study we compare the cost efficiency of banks in ten South East European countries and find out how differences in efficiency are related to EU membership. The results reveal a statistically significant cost efficiency gap between EU and non-EU banking systems in the region, where on average EU banking systems tend to be more cost efficient than their non-EU counterparts. In contrast to other similar studies analyzing banking efficiency in South East European countries, we also run β-convergence and σ-convergence tests, as proposed in the literature. Based on these tests we can draw conclusions concerning the existence of a catching-up effect, since the detected cost efficiency gap is closing predominantly because of adjustments on the side of the less efficient banks. Additionally, we found that during the 2008 global financial crisis, the average cost efficiency scores of banks in the region improved, which could be explained by enhanced incentives of bank managers for intensified cost optimization in banks in crisis times. Our results suggest that the institutional adjustments in the non-EU countries should continue towards EU standards, as the EU banking systems tend to dominate in terms of measured cost efficiency.     

Similarity of emerging market returns under changing market conditions: Markets in the ASEAN-4, Latin America,Middle East,and BRICs

We studied the risk-return distances of 18 emerging stock markets in the period from January 2000 to December 2013. Distances are linked to volatility and time-varying correlations estimated in standard and asymmetric DCC models. Our results revealed a positive relationship between risk-return distances and volatility, which means that during more volatile periods, the risk-return characteristics in emerging markets exhibit lower similarity to the characteristics found in developed markets. This result seems to be in sharp contrast to most empirical studies using correlations. Within the portfolio framework, our results suggest that diversification into emerging stock markets may still provide desirable benefits to international investors.     

Risk spillover between the US and the remaining G7 stock markets using time-varying copulas with Markov switching: Evidence from over a century of data

This paper analyses the risk spillover effect between the US stock market and the remaining G7 stock markets by measuring the conditional Value-at-Risk (CoVaR) using time-varying copula models with Markov switching and data that covers more than 100 years. The main results suggest that the dependence structure varies with time and has distinct high and low dependence regimes. Our findings verify the existence of risk spillover between the US stock market and the remaining G7 stock markets. Furthermore, the results imply the following: 1) abnormal spikes of dynamic CoVaR were induced by well-known historical economic shocks; 2) The value of upside risk spillover is significantly larger than the downside risk spillover and 3) The magnitudes of risk spillover from the remaining G7 countries to the US are significantly larger than that from the US to these countries.     

业财融合在高新技术企业中的应用研究

在我国,高新技术企业是推动国家科技发展的核心力量.在国民经济发展环境日趋复杂的今天,高新技术企业为了获取更为广阔的发展空间,必须重视业财融合的作用,通过将高新技术企业中的业务、财务相结合,促进企业经济管理的合理化.文章结合实际,对业财融合在高新技术企业中的应用提出了个人观点,希望为关注业财融合的人群提供参考.     

石家庄都市区城乡一体化进程与空间组织

随着城乡差距的日益加大,都市区成为实现城乡一体化的重点区域.本文对石家庄都市区城乡一体化进程现状特征和问题进行了分析,发现石家庄都市区虽然进行了“退二进三”功能调整,但临近市区的四县市与远离市区的十三县市产业结构雷同、发展水平相当,严重阻碍了石家庄都市区竞争优势的发挥.由此提出了“强化中心、壮大外围、联动城乡、优化体系...     

中国能源效率的测度及演化分析

利用时空加权回归模型测度中国能源效率演化中的时空局域特征,并用新古典经济学方法估算中国能源反弹效应情况,探讨其对能源效率演化的复杂性影响。研究结果表明,中国能源效率演化过程受到各因素的共同驱动,但在局部区域和阶段上存在异质性。技术进步对能源效率的负面作用源于能源反弹效应的冲击。只有充分考虑能源效率演化路径的时空差异,同时结合节能政策来减缓能源反弹的冲击,才能实现区域能源效率提高和能源消费的平衡发展。     

Explaining trade policy in the Middle East and North Africa

This paper examines the evolution of trade policy in the Middle East and North Africa (MNA) countries since the 1960s. It shows that contrary to the current popular perception, until the 1980s MNA countries were generally more open than the rest of the developing world. That situation changed in the 1980s and especially the 1990s as most MNA countries maintained their trade policies, while many other developing countries proceeded with liberalization. The paper develops and estimates a political economy model of trade policy to search for the factors behind the initial relative openness of the region and its reversal. The results show that the pattern is related to the rise and decline of the region's resource rents, which affected the political weight of domestic producers versus consumers. Other factors are also considered, but they all seem to have secondary effects.