How strong is the global integration of emerging market regions? An empirical assessment

This paper attempts to evaluate the time-varying integration of emerging markets from a regional perspective based on a conditional version of the International Capital Asset Pricing Model (ICAPM) with DCC-GARCH parameters that allows for dynamic changes in the degree of market integration, global market risk premium, regional exchange-rate risk premium, and local market risk premium. Our findings reveal several interesting facts. First, the time-varying degree of integration of four emerging regions under consideration, satisfactorily explained by the regional level of trade openness and the term premium of US interest rates, has recently tended to increase, but these markets still remain substantially segmented from the world market. Second, the local market risk premium is found to explain more than 50% of the total risk premium for emerging market returns. Finally, we show that conditional correlations usually underestimate and overstate the measure of time-varying market integration. The empirical results of this study have some important implications for both global investors and policymakers with respect to dedicated portfolio investments in emerging markets and policy adjustments.     

Time-varying beta: a boundedly rational equilibrium approach

The conditional CAPM with time-varying betas has been widely used to explain the cross-section of asset returns. However, most of the literature on time-varying beta is motivated by econometric estimation using various latent risk factors rather than explicit modelling of the stochastic behaviour of betas through agents’ behaviour, such as momentum trading. Misspecification of beta risk and the lack of any theoretical guidance on how to specify risk factors based on the representative agent economy appear empirically challenging. In this paper, we set up a dynamic equilibrium model of a financial market with boundedly rational and heterogeneous agents within the mean-variance framework of repeated one-period optimisation and develop an explicit dynamic behaviour CAPM relation between the expected equilibrium returns and time-varying betas. By incorporating the two most commonly used types of investors, fundamentalists and chartists, into the model, we show that there is a systematic change in the market portfolio, risk-return relationships, and time varying betas when investors change their behaviour, such as the chartists acting as momentum traders. In particular, we demonstrate the stochastic nature of time-varying betas. We also show that the commonly used rolling window estimates of time-varying betas may not be consistent with the ex-ante betas implied by the equilibrium model. The results provide a number of insights into an understanding of time-varying beta.     

Centralized Private Sector Planning: An Institutionalist’s Perspective on the Contemporary U.S. Economy

It is well accepted among Institutionalist and Post Keynesian scholars that portfolio investment markets are driven by agents' expectations rather than "the fundamentals." This explains, it is argued, why asset and currency prices are so much more volatile than and often clearly out of line with what we would otherwise consider to be their underlying determinants. What is rarely addressed, however, is how those expectations are formed. This paper fills the void by proposing a specific view of agents' expectations based on the mental model they employ to understand currency movements. The paper derives this schematic by examining market participants' psychological propensities and the world view of the subculture of which they are members. It will be shown that the model is consistent with the salient features of the foreign exchange market and it is employed to explain the dollar's fall from 2001 through 2008.     

Regional stock market integration in Singapore: A multivariate analysis

This paper evaluates the time-varying integration of the Singapore stock market in the ASEAN-5 region based on a conditional version of the International Capital Asset Pricing Model (ICAPM) with c-DCC-FIAPARCH parameters. This model allows for dynamic changes in the degree of market integration, regional market risk premium, regional exchange-rate risk premium, and domestic market risk premium. Our findings show several interesting facts. First, the time-varying degree of integration in the Singapore market is satisfactorily explained by the level of trade openness and the term premium of US interest rates, which have recently tended to increase, however these markets remain substantially segmented from the world market. Second, the local market risk premium is found to explain a significant proportion of the total risk premium for emerging market returns. Our findings illustrate several important implications for portfolio hedgers for making optimal portfolio allocations, engaging in risk management and forecasting future volatility in equity markets. Our results are also of interest for both policymakers and investors, with respect to regional development policies and dedicated portfolio investment strategies in the ASEAN-5 region.     

Volatility Spillovers and Contagion from Mature to Emerging Stock Markets

This paper models volatility spillovers from mature to emerging stock markets, tests for changes in the transmission mechanism during turbulences in mature markets, and examines the implications for conditional correlations between mature and emerging market returns. Tri‐variate GARCH–BEKK models of returns in mature, regional emerging, and local emerging markets are estimated for 41 emerging market economies (EMEs). Wald tests suggest that mature market volatility affects conditional variances in many emerging markets. Moreover, spillover parameters change during turbulent episodes. In the majority of the sample EMEs, conditional correlations between local and mature markets increase during these episodes. While conditional variances in local markets rise as well, volatility in mature markets rises more, and this shift is the main factor behind the increase in conditional correlations. With few exceptions, conditional beta coefficients between mature and emerging markets tend to be unchanged or lower during turbulences.     

Volatility and dynamic conditional correlations of worldwide emerging and frontier markets

This study examines the relationship between time-varying correlations and conditional volatility among 32 worldwide emerging and frontier stock markets and the MSCI World stock market index from January 2000 to December 2012. Correlations are estimated in the standard and asymmetric dynamic conditional correlation model frameworks. The results can be summarized by three main findings: (1) asymmetry in volatility is not a common phenomenon in emerging and frontier markets; (2) asymmetry in correlations is found only with respect to the Hungarian stock market; and (3) the relationship between volatility and correlations is positive and significant in most countries. Thus, diversification benefits decrease during periods of higher volatility.     

Stock market comovements in Central Europe: Evidence from the asymmetric DCC model

We examine time-varying stock market comovements in Central Europe employing the asymmetric dynamic conditional correlation multivariate GARCH model. Using daily data from 2001 to 2011, we find that the correlations among stock markets in Central Europe and between Central Europe vis-à-vis the euro area are strong. The correlations increased over time, particularly after their EU entry and largely remained at these levels during the financial crisis. The stock markets exhibit asymmetry in the conditional variances and to a certain extent in the conditional correlations as well, pointing to the importance of applying a sufficiently flexible econometric framework. The conditional variances and correlations are positively related, suggesting that the diversification benefits decrease disproportionally during volatile periods.     

Government Bonds in Domestic and Foreign Currency: the Role of Institutional and Macroeconomic Factors*

In contrast to some recent research, this paper finds that institutional and macroeconomic factors are related to the depth and currency composition of government bond markets. Using panel data for developed and emerging economies, we find several factors to be systematically associated with bond markets. Aside from economic size (already shown to affect the currency composition), this paper shows that investor bases matter. Economies with deeper domestic financial systems (measured by bank deposits and stock market capitalization) have larger domestic currency bond markets and issue less foreign currency debt, whereas foreign investor demand is positively related to the size and share of foreign currency bonds. Moreover, less flexible exchange rate regimes are associated with more foreign currency issuance. Other relevant variables include inflation, fiscal burden, legal origin, and capital account openness.     

Global money market interrelationships

This study extends the literature dealing with money market interrelationships by analyzing the behavior of yields on assets denominated in five major world currencies in three different geographic markets within a multivariate cointegration framework. Basic findings include: (1) same currency money market yields are cointegrated across countries; (2) domestic markets and the Eurocurrency markets are closely linked, as are the Eurocurrency markets and the Asian currency markets; (3) the relationships between domestic markets and the Asian offshore markets are the weakest of those tested; and (4) only one common factor in three geographic markets indicates a global market, whereas significant causal effects suggest that a degree of market segmentation remains.     

Stock market integration of emerging Asian economies: Patterns and causes

In this study, we examine the patterns and causes of stock market integration of selected emerging Asian nations against the US, Australia, China, and India for the period 1 January 2001 to 31 March 2012. We compare patterns of market integration for countries on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis using the time-varying correlation technique, namely, GARCH-dynamic conditional correlations (DCCs). In doing so, we suggest that opportunities in cross border investment vary by frequencies. We also divide daily data into subsamples and find that correlations were strongest during the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2007–09. The time varying bilateral correlations are found to be highly volatile. We also investigate the causes of identified correlations and find that apart from the GFC, the underlying economic and financial conditions have also been responsible for the higher correlations between these stock markets.     

Student-t distribution based VAR-MGARCH: an application of the DCC model on international portfolio risk management

Significant second-moment transmission effects and obvious time-varying patterns of correlation coefficients among major equity and currency markets in the US, Japan and the UK are found to exist. Such observations inspire the time-varying setting of dynamic conditional correlation coefficients in MGARCH models. On the other hand, the multivariate Student-t distribution is suitable for analysing the visible leptokurtosis that is common in financial markets. Both are important for international portfolio risk management. Thus, a comparison on the hedging efficiency of hypothetical portfolios consisting of stock and currency future positions is conducted in order to justify the multivariate Student-t distribution based on the DCC-MGARCH model.     

Capital Inflows,Exchange Rate Flexibility and Credit Booms

Historically, capital flow bonanzas have often fueled sharp credit expansions in advanced and emerging market economies alike. Focusing primarily on emerging markets, this paper analyzes the impact of exchange rate flexibility on credit markets during periods of large capital inflows. It is shown that bank credit is larger and its composition tilts to foreign currency in economies with less flexible exchange rate regimes, and that these results are not explained entirely by the fact that the latter attract more capital inflows than economies with more flexible regimes. The findings thus suggest countries with less flexible exchange rate regimes may stand to benefit the most from regulatory policies that reduce banks' incentives to tap external markets and to lend/borrow in foreign currency; these policies include marginal reserve requirements on foreign lending, currency‐dependent liquidity requirements and higher capital requirement and/or dynamic provisioning on foreign exchange loans.     

Stock Market‐Induced Currency Crises—A New Type of Twins

This paper explores the link between currency crises and the stock market in emerging economies. By integrating foreign stock market investors in a currency crisis model, we reveal a new fundamental inconsistency as a potential crisis trigger: since emerging economies' stock markets often have high returns, whereas central bank reserves grow slowly or decline, the amount of reserves foreign investors can deplete when selling their stocks and repatriating the proceeds grows over time and is considerably higher than funds that have been invested in the stock market. Capital withdrawals of foreign stock market investors can trigger currency crises by depleting central bank reserves, particularly in successful countries with booming stock markets and large foreign investment.     

宏观经济状态对资产定价因子的影响

为刻画资产定价因子随宏观经济状态时变性,本文通过经济增长和通货膨胀两个指标定义经济状态,建立宏观经济状态下的条件资产定价模型。研究发现在中国资本市场上此模型能够显著改进CAPM模型的效力,其定价效力甚至优于多因子模型。进一步研究表明,宏观经济通过两个维度影响资产价格：第一,多数资产在衰退时期对市场风险更敏感,其代表市场因子的贝塔系数大于复苏与过热阶段;第二,小市值公司的贝塔系数均值及波动性大于大公司,在经济衰退时承担更高的风险收益。     

Interrelationship between crude oil and the stock markets of major demanders and suppliers in emerging and developed markets

This paper investigates the time-varying relationship between the stock markets of advanced and emerging oil-exporting and oil-importing countries and the international crude oil price indices. The results reveal that the time-varying among the oil-exporting and oil-importing countries responds similarly to aggregate supply- and demand-side effects. Oil-exporting countries have a slightly higher integration with the oil markets, while oil supply shocks have a slightly higher impact on emerging oil-exporting countries. The oil markets exhibit a lower time-varying relationship with the Asia-Pacific oil-importing markets, which indicates those markets may be attractive to investors during periods of turbulence in the oil market.     

Currency crises and the stock market: empirical evidence for another type of twin crisis

We explore the dependency between currency crises and the stock market in emerging economies. Our focus is two-fold. First, the risk of a currency crisis rises as the foreign stake in the domestic stock market increases. Successful economies with high capital flows into their booming stock markets especially are prone to stock market-induced currency crises. Second, we apply the dividend growth model to show that stock markets crash in the run-up to a currency crisis. This new type of twin crisis is empirically tested by employing a logit framework using quarterly data for 33 emerging economies for 1994Q1–2007Q4.     

Stock,Energy and Currency Effects on the Asymmetric Wheat Market

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of financial and currency indicators on wheat futures prices. The results suggest that the stock market, and particularly the S&P 500, positively influence the wheat market, a fact that is attributed to the wealth effect and the modern portfolio management in the context of international markets’ integration. There is also evidence that the energy markets affecting the supply and demand side exert significant impact on the wheat market. Furthermore, the results show that the shocks of the U.S. dollar/yen exchange rate are transmitted to the wheat market. Finally, the structural analysis of wheat prices’ volatility support the hypothesis of the asymmetric conditional variance, as it appears to be more volatile in response to positive shocks caused by higher wheat prices, contrary to the respective results of the equities market.     

Financial market integration: Theory and empirical results

In this article, we introduce a new theoretical international asset pricing model which accounts for partial financial market segmentation. We show that if some investors do not hold all international assets because of implicit and/or explicit segmentation factors, the world market portfolio is not efficient and the classic ICAPM must be augmented by a new factor reflecting the local risk undiversifiable internationally. We test this model empirically for a sample of emerging markets. Our findings show that the degree of market integration is time-varying and that the premium associated with the domestic risk factors is the most important component of the total risk premium. However, our results also show that most of the emerging markets we study have become more integrated in the end of our sample period as a result of liberalization and reforms.     

Expected risk and excess returns predictability in emerging bond markets

This study examines the predictability of expected excess returns from eight emerging bond markets within an international asset pricing framework. Two sets of instruments are used, which include both world and local factors, to forecast emerging bond returns. Besides investigating the influence of the macroeconomic factors in specific countries on bond returns in those countries, this study also divides local factors into macroeconomic and financial factors. Unlike previous studies, we apply macroeconomic instruments that contain more information on excess returns as a proxy for local risk factors via principal component analysis methodology. The information variable approach enables the prediction of excess bond returns based on world and local factors and facilitating understanding of the degree of integration between emerging bond markets and developed bond markets. The results indicate that the bond market in emerging world is partially integrated to that in the developed world and the predictability of local factors that include both financial and macroeconomic information variables can forecast around 25–66% of the returns of emerging bonds. Incorporating the macroeconomic variables increases the explanatory power of the model. Both world and country-specific local instruments can forecast excess bond returns, but local instruments appear to be better predictors of such returns, particularly the local credit spread to US. Additionally, this study finds that investor risk aversion is significant among most of sample countries.     

Conditional heteroscedasticity with leverage effect in stock returns: Evidence from the Chinese stock market

In recent years the Chinese stock market has experienced an astonishing growth and unprecedented development, but is also viewed as one of the most volatile markets, which has been called by many observers a “casino”. This study intends to examine the presence of heteroskedasticity and the leverage effect in the Chinese stock markets, and to capture the dynamics of conditional correlation between returns of China's stock markets and those of the U.S. in a bivariate VC-MGARCH framework. The results show that the leverage effect is significant in these markets during the sample period in 2000–2013, and the conditional correlation between mainland China's and the U.S. stock markets is quite low and highly volatile. The Chinese stock markets are found to be highly regimes persistent. These findings have important implication for investors seeking opportunity of portfolio diversification.