On the predictability of the distribution of excess returns in currency markets

This paper investigates the predictability of foreign exchange (FX) volatility and liquidity risk factors on returns to the carry trade, an investment strategy that borrows in currencies with low interest rates and invests in currencies with high interest rates. Previous studies have suggested that this predictability could have been spuriously accounted for due to the persistence of the predictors. The analysis uses a predictive quantile regression model developed by Lee (2016) that allows for persistent predictors. We find that predictability changes remarkably across the entire distribution of currency excess returns. Predictability weakens substantially in the left tail once persistence is accounted for, implying a moderate negative predictive relation between FX volatility risk and carry trade returns. By contrast, it becomes stronger in the right tail. Furthermore, we provide evidence that FX volatility risk still dominates liquidity risk after controlling for persistence. These findings suggest that the persistence of the predictors needs to be taken into account when one measures predictability in currency markets. Finally, out-of-sample forecast performance is also presented.     

Spillover effects on the sectoral returns for australian and New Zealand equity markets

In this paper, we examine the return and volatility spillovers, together with the trend spillovers on the sectoral equity returns for Australian and New Zealand markets. We find that the return spillovers of industrial, local and global shocks have a limited effect on Australian and New Zealand sector returns, whereas the volatility spillovers play a significant role on explaining the volatility of sector equity indices. Furthermore, we discover that the volatility spillover effects of the global and industrial shocks are greater in magnitude for explaining the volatility of the Australian sectors than those of New Zealand, particularly basic materials, oil and gas, technology and telecom sectors. By employing the trend spillover model, we find that the volatility spillover effects of global sector indices have been increasing over the volatility of the Australian sectoral returns until now. This finding proposes that Australian sector equity market is more integrated with the world than the New Zealand counterpart.     

Modeling common volatility characteristics and dynamic risk premia in European equity markets

The paper applies a Factor-GARCH model to evaluate the impact of the market portfolio, as a single common dynamic risk factor, on conditional volatility and risk premia for the returns on size-based equity portfolios of three major European markets; France, Germany and the United Kingdom. The results show that for the size-based portfolios the factor loading for the dynamic market factor is significant and positive but the association between the risk premia and the conditional market volatility is weak. However, the dynamic market factor is shown to explain common characteristics in the conditional variance such as asymmetry and persistence. This finding is consistent across markets and portfolio sizes.     

Causality-in-variance and causality-in-mean between the Greek sovereign bond yields and Southern European banking sector equity returns

This paper adopts the robust cross-correlation function methodology developed by Hong (J Econom 103:183–224, 2001) in order to test for volatility and mean spillovers between Greek long-term government bond yields and the banking sector stock returns of four Southern European countries, namely Greece, Portugal, Italy, and Spain. Its primary focus is on investigating the potential impacts of the recent European sovereign debt crisis. While most previous studies have focused on within-country causalities, we rather assess cross-country transmission effects. The presented results provide evidence of bidirectional volatility spillovers between Greek long-term interest rates and the banking sector equities of Portugal, Italy, and Spain that emerged during the European sovereign debt crisis. We also find significant unidirectional causality-in-mean from bank stock returns in Greece to Greek long-term bond yields during the crisis period as well as significant causality at the mean level from the bank equity returns in Portugal, Italy, and Spain to Greek bond yields.     

Value at risk models for volatile emerging markets equity portfolios

This paper investigates the issue of market risk quantification for emerging and developed market equity portfolios. A very wide spectrum of popular and widely used in practice Value at Risk (VaR) models are evaluated and compared with Extreme Value Theory (EVT) and adaptive filtered models, during normal, crises, and post-crises periods. The results are interesting and indicate that despite the documented differences between emerging and developed markets, the most successful VaR models are common for both asset classes. Furthermore, in the case of the (fatter tailed) emerging market equity portfolios, most VaR models turn out to yield conservative risk forecasts, in contrast to developed market equity portfolios, where most models underestimate the realized VaR. VaR estimation during periods of financial turmoil seems to be a difficult task, particularly in the case of emerging markets and especially for the higher loss quantiles. VaR models seem to be affected less by crises periods in the case of developed markets. The performance of the parametric (non-parametric) VaR models improves (deteriorates) during post-crises periods due to the inclusion of extreme events in the estimation sample.     

Stock returns and economic activity in mature and emerging markets

This paper empirically investigates the dynamic interdependencies between stock returns and economic activity in mature and emerging markets. The existence, kind and strength of potential uni-directional and/or bi-directional relations are examined, running from stock returns to future economic activity and/or from economic activity to future stock returns. A bivariate VAR(12) model is applied and Granger causality tests are performed. Monthly data covering the January 1991–December 2006 period are used. The existence of an empirical relationship, with forecasting ability, between stock returns and future economic activity is confirmed. The results are strongly differentiated between mature and emerging markets.     

Co-movement in the price of risk of aggregate equity markets

This paper examines the issue of co-movement in G7 equity markets. Earlier research in this area has focussed on the first or the second moment of the return process from different markets. The approach in this paper takes the analysis to a finer level to examine the co-movement between these markets. The price of risk from the equity market is inferred in an unobserved component modelling framework to study the co-movement using a non-parametric measure of association, concordance. The findings of this paper also indicate that the price of risk is more important than volatility in explaining movements in excess return.     

On Granger’s predictability of financial markets in theory and practice

I was kindly invited by the organizers to discuss the presentation by Professor Clive Granger at the 5th International Institute of Forecasters Workshop in Lisbon, which was, perhaps, the last one that he ever delivered in a regular meeting. The task would have not been easy in any case, given his deep knowledge of the field and his many contributions. My discussion, however, turned out to be more difficult than I anticipated, given that there was no formal paper to discuss, just some sparse notes that he had written at various different dates, but certainly before the spectacular gyrations that hit the speculative markets in mid to late October 2008 and early December 2008. During our brief encounters at the workshop, he mentioned the thought of expanding his notes and writing a full-length paper on the issue. However, his unexpected demise left this thought unrealized. The editors of this special issue thought that it would remain incomplete without his outstanding contribution, and invited me to write my reflections on his notes and his verbal presentation. If discussing the paper (in an informal setting) was already daring, writing a paper on such a wide and complicated topic was a daunting task. I had many reasons for refusing the assignment; however, in the end, I felt that I should take it, if only as a personal homage to a giant in our discipline.     

A further look at linkages between NAFTA equity markets

Recent research finds evidence for convergence among the North American equity markets and argues that this is generated by the North Atlantic Free Trade Accord (NAFTA). In this paper, we re-examine these conclusions and show that the documented cointegration property among the NAFTA equity markets was in fact confined to a sub-period in the late 1990s. We argue that the comovement was caused by the global boom in information technology shares and the resulting change in the sector mix of the value-weighted benchmark indexes used in prior work. We present evidence supporting this alternative hypothesis using an updated data set that includes global industry indexes. Our results have implications for transmission of information across global equity markets and international portfolio diversification.     

Restrictions on outward portfolio investment and domestic equity markets

Governments sometimes impose restrictions on local investors which effectively prevent them from purchasing overseas equities. Reasons for doing this, from the government's point of view, would include increasing the availability of risk capital to local companies and lowering its costs. The paper analyses this argument in terms of modern portfolio theory. It is shown that, under certain circumstances, domestic equities and overseas equities may be complements rather than substitutes. In this case the effect of the restrictions would be to lower prices on the domestic stock exchange and to raise the cost of risk capital to local companies. Indications are given of the circumstances in which this effect is likely to occur. Policy makers who are not aware of the risk-spreading motives which underly much international portfolio investment in equities are likely to overstimate the benefits to local industry from forcing local equity investors to keep their funds at home.     

Revisiting dividend yield dynamics and returns predictability: Evidence from a time-varying ESTR model

Since the bubble of the late 1990s the dividend yield appears non-stationary indicating the breakdown of the equilibrium relationship between prices and dividends. Two lines of research have developed in order to explain this apparent breakdown. First, that the dividend yield is better characterised as a non-linear process and second, that it is subject to mean level shifts. This paper jointly models both of these characteristics by allowing non-linear reversion to a changing mean level. Results support stationarity of this model for eight international dividend yield series. This model is than applied to the forecast of monthly stock returns. Evidence supports our time-varying non-linear model over linear alternatives, particularly so on the basis of an out-of-sample R-squared measure and a trading rule exercise. More detailed examination of the trading rule measure suggests that investors could obtain positive returns, as the model forecasts do not imply excessive trading such that costs would not outweigh returns. Finally, the superior performance of the non-linear model largely arises from its ability to forecast negative returns, whereas linear models are unable to do.     

The dynamics of Central European equity market comovements

This paper examines short-term and long-term comovements between developed European Union (EU) stock markets and those of three Central European (CE) countries which recently joined the EU. Dynamic cointegration and principal components methods are applied, in addition to static tests. While we find no evidence of cointegration for the period July 1995–February 2005 as a whole, dynamic tests reveal alternating period of cointegration disrupted by episodes dominated by short-term domestic factors. Principal components analysis reveals that a stable factor explains a large proportion of return variances. Ultimately, despite the decade-long process of alignment by CE countries with the EU, evidence of steadily increasing convergence of equity markets is lacking.     

Shock and volatility spillovers among equity sectors of the Gulf Arab stock markets

The major objectives of this study are twofold. The first objective is to examine the dynamic volatility and volatility transmission in a multivariate setting using the VAR(1)–GARCH(1,1) model for three major sectors, namely, Service, Banking and Industrial/or Insurance, in four Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)’s economies (Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and UAE). The second is to use the models’ results to compute and analyze the optimal weights and hedge ratios for two-sector portfolio holdings, comprised of the three sectors for each country. The results suggest that past own volatilities matter more than past shocks and there are moderate volatility spillovers between the sectors within the individual countries, with the exception of Qatar. Moreover, the values for ratios of hedging long positions with short positions in the GCC sectors are smaller than those for the US equity sectors. The optimal portfolio weights favor the Banking/financial sector for Qatar, Saudi Arabia and UAE and the Industrial sector for Kuwait.     

Testing for spatial market integration and law of one price in Turkish wheat markets

This paper examines co-integration models in testing for spatial market integration and the Law of One Price (LOP) for Turkish wheat market. The multivariate co-integration tests show that there is one co-integrating vector in the system which implies that though the markets are integrated, the LOP does not hold. Vector error correction model restrictions tests also show that structural breaks have impacts on the long-run linkage among the prices. These results are important for wheat production policies and for wheat market liberalization considerations in the future.     

The impacts of investor sentiment on returns and conditional volatility of international stock markets

One of the main arguments of behavioral finance is that some properties of asset prices are most probably regarded as deviations from fundamental value and they are generated by the participation of traders who are not fully rational, thus called noise traders. Noise trader theory postulates that sentiment traders have greater impact during high-sentiment periods than during low-sentiment periods, and sentiment traders miscalculate the variance of returns undermining the mean-variance relation. The main objective of this research is to construct a model to evaluate the returns and conditional volatility of various stock market indexes considering the changes in the investor sentiment by measuring the effects of noise trader demand shocks on returns and volatility. EGARCH model is used to determine whether earning shocks have more influence on the conditional volatility in high sentiment periods weakening the mean–variance relation. This paper takes an international approach using weekly market index returns of U.S., Japan, Hong Kong, U.K., France, Germany, and Turkey. Weekly trading volumes of these indexes are regressed against a group of macroeconomic variables and the residuals are used as proxies for investor sentiment and significant evidence is found that there is asymmetric volatility in these market indexes and earning shocks have more influence on conditional volatility when the sentiment is high.     

Contagion in global equity markets in 1998: The effects of the Russian and LTCM crises

The Russian and LTCM financial crises in 1998 originated in bond markets, but rapidly transmitted through international equity markets. A multi-factor model of financial markets with multiple regimes is used to estimate the transmission effects in equity markets due to global, regional and contagious transmission mechanisms during the crises. Using a panel of 10 emerging and industrial financial markets, the empirical results show that contagion is significant and widespread in international equity markets during the LTCM crisis, but is more selective during the Russian crisis. Contagion effects in equities differ to those previously noted in bond markets for this period.     

Nonlinear effects of monetary policy on stock returns in a smooth transition autoregressive model

This paper employs smooth transition autoregressive (STAR) models to investigate the nonlinear effect of monetary policy on stock returns. The change in the Federal funds rate is used as an endogenous measure of monetary policy, and the growth rate of industrial production is also considered in the model. Our results show that the relationship between the monetary policy and excess returns on stock prices is positive and nonlinear. A decrease in the Federal funds rate causes a larger increase in excess returns if excess stock returns are located in the extreme low excess returns regime.     

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.