Price volatility,international market links,and their implications for regulatory policies

Conclusions The October 1987 stock market crash spawned an abundance of research papers, as scholars attempted to explain what seemed at the time, and to some extent remains, an inexplicable event.Except for the period immediately around the crash, there is only meager evidence that international linkages across markets have become tighter over time. Yet the crash was worldwide in scope, and its similarity across countries was uncanny. Just on the face, this international similarity puts doubt to such explanations as particular macroeconomic events in one country, failure of a given country's market system, or simultaneous changes in underlying fundamentals (which were quite different across countries).Assigning the origination of the crash to one country cannot be entirely ruled out, however, because of the possibility of a non-fully revealing equilibrium contagion process of the type suggested by King and Wadhwani (1988). Such a process would allow a world-wide crash to begin by a particular news event or even by a market mistake in one country. Evidence in favor of this process is that international correlations of returns increased dramatically during the crash period. However, this increase is consistent with other explanations, such as transaction costs hindering international arbitrage except during periods of high volatility.Was the crash the bursting of a bubble? Some evidence seems to support this proposition: for example, in the majority of countries, the pre-crash period displayed significant serial dependence in stock returns, dependence that was definitely not present in the post-crash period. However, further work is necessary to ascertain whether this measured serial dependence is unusual relative to what one would have expected to find, even in a perfectly random process, by choosing a sample period that happened to culminate in a random peak. Ross (1987) shows that such ex post sample period selection will induce upward bias in estimates of serial dependence. Cross-country tests failed to detect this bias, but there are several ambiguities in the tests that will have to be resolved in future work.The crash is history. What implications, if any, does it have for regulatory policy? Is there evidence that popular regulations or rules would have mitigated the crash, or that they would decrease price volatility in general? There is very little evidence in favor of the efficacity of margin requirements, price limits, or transactions taxes. Despite a large number of empirical studies, no one has provided evidence that margin requirements have an impact on volatility. There has been at least one recent paper claiming the contrary, but a careful examination of its methods have uncovered enough problems to cast those results into doubt.As for price limits, there must be a very short-term impact on measured volatility, for the measured market price at a trading halt is likely to understate the direction of movement. Yet even for daily data, the cross-country evidence is slim that price limits reduce volatility, and there is no evidence at all that they work over periods as long as a week. In other words, trading halts caused by limits seem to have no effect on true volatility.Transaction taxes are inversely but insignificantly correlated with volatility across countries, and the effect is too questionable for taxes to be used with confidence as an effective policy instrument.     

Forecasting stock market volatility: Further international evidence

Abstract

This paper evaluates the out-of-sample forecasting accuracy of eleven models for monthly volatility in fifteen stock markets. Volatility is defined as within-month standard deviation of continuously compounded daily returns on the stock market index of each country for the ten-year period 1988 to 1997. The first half of the sample is retained for the estimation of parameters while the second half is for the forecast period. The following models are employed: a random walk model, a historical mean model, moving average models, weighted moving average models, exponentially weighted moving average models, an exponential smoothing model, a regression model, an ARCH model, a GARCH model, a GJR-GARCH model, and an EGARCH model. First, standard (symmetric) loss functions are used to evaluate the performance of the competing models: mean absolute error, root mean squared error, and mean absolute percentage error. According to all of these standard loss functions, the exponential smoothing model provides superior forecasts of volatility. On the other hand, ARCH-based models generally prove to be the worst forecasting models. Asymmetric loss functions are employed to penalize under-/over-prediction. When under-predictions are penalized more heavily, ARCH-type models provide the best forecasts while the random walk is worst. However, when over-predictions of volatility are penalized more heavily, the exponential smoothing model performs best while the ARCH-type models are now universally found to be inferior forecasters.     

The determination and international transmission of stock market volatility

This paper extends the literature on low-frequency analysis of the causes and transmission of stock market volatility. It uses end-monthly data on stock market returns, interest rates, exchange rates, inflation, and industrial production for five countries (Britain, France, Germany, Japan, and the US) from July 1973 to December 1994. Efficient portfolios of world, European, and Japanese/US equity are first constructed, the existence of multivariate cointegrating relationships between them is demonstrated, and the transmission of conditional volatility between them is described. The transmission of conditional volatility from world equity markets and national business cycle variables to national stock markets is then modeled. Among the main findings are: first, world equity market volatility is caused mostly by volatility in Japanese/US markets and transmitted to European markets, and second, changes in the volatility of inflation are associated with changes of the opposite sign in stock market volatility in all markets where a significant effect is found to exist. To the extent that the volatility of inflation is positively related to its level, this implies that low inflation tends to be associated with high stock market volatility.     

Explaining international stock correlations with CPI fluctuations and market volatility

This paper investigates the dynamic correlations among six international stock market indices and their relationship to inflation fluctuation and market volatility. The current research uses a newly developed time series model, the Double Smooth Transition Conditional Correlation with Conditional Auto Regressive Range (DSTCC-CARR) model. Findings reveal that international stock correlations are significantly time-varying and the evolution among them is related to cyclical fluctuations of inflation rates and stock volatility. The higher/lower correlations emerge between countries when both countries experience a contractionary/expansionary phase or higher/lower volatilities.     

Price limit bands,asymmetric volatility and stock market anomalies: Evidence from emerging markets

I investigate the effects of imposing different bands of price limits on stock returns and volatility in the Egyptian (EGX), Thai (SET) and Korean (KRX) stock exchanges. In addition, the paper examines whether the switch from narrow price limits (NPL) to wider price limits (WPL) structurally alters volatility and the day of the week anomaly. Using the extended EGARCH and PARCH asymmetric volatility models, I found that the switch from NPL to WPL structurally altered both asymmetric volatility and the day of the week anomaly in the EGX, SET and KRX. I argue that the price discovery mechanism is disrupted due to the switch as closing prices do not fully reflect all information arrived in the market when prices hit the limits and that is reflected on volatility and market efficiency.     

Automating the price discovery process: Some international comparisons and regulatory implications

Automated trade execution systems are examined with respect to the degree to which they automate the price discovery process. Seven levels of automation of price discovery are identified, and 47 systems are classified according to these criteria. Systems operating at various levels of automation are compared with respect to age, geographical location, and type of securities traded. Information provided to market participants and asymmetries of information between traders with direct access to the automated market and outside investors also are examined. It is found, for example, that the degree of asymmetric information increases with the level of automation of price discovery. The potential for trading abuses related to prearranged trading, noncompetitive execution, and trading ahead of customers is analyzed for each level of automation. Certain levels of automation widen the opportunities for trading abuses in some respects, but may narrow them in others.     

Stock market cycles, financial liberalization and volatility

In this paper we analyze the cycles of the stock markets in four Latin American and two Asian countries, and we compare their characteristics. We divide our sample in two subperiods in order to account for differences induced by the financial liberalization processes of the early 1990s. We find that cycles in emerging countries tend to have shorter duration and larger amplitude and volatility than in developed countries. However, after financial liberalization Latin American stock markets have behaved more similarly to stock markets in developed countries whereas Asian countries have become more dissimilar. Concordance of cycles across markets has increased significantly over time, especially for Latin American countries after liberalization.     

Trading volume,time-varying conditional volatility,and asymmetric volatility spillover in the Saudi stock market

Despite the well known importance of volatility–volume relationship, there is a paucity of research on this topic in emerging markets. We attempt to partially fill this gap by investigating volatility–volume relationship in the most important exchange market in the Middle East. We test the effect of trading volume on the persistence of the time-varying conditional volatility of returns in the Saudi stock market. Overall our results support the mixture of distribution hypothesis at the firm level. We also use two different proxies for information arrival, intra-day volatility, and overnight indicators. We find that these are good proxies for information and are important as contemporaneous volume in explaining conditional volatility. We also test for the volatility spillover direction between large- and small-cap portfolios. Our results show that the spillover effect is larger and statistically significant from large to small companies.     

金融产品监管的国际实践及启示

此次国际金融危机显示,过快的金融产品创新和国际化发展在缺乏有效监管的情况下,可能成为引发系统性风险的导火索。危机后,各国当局将金融监管的触角延伸到金融产品层面。以产品监管为核心的功能性监管的确立,是金融监管发展过程中的一个重要里程碑,它实现了金融监管活动向金融体系最微观、最基础元素的延伸。当前,各国在金融产品监管领域的实践,对于我国开展金融产品监管具有重要的启示意义。     

美国金融监管改革法案与其现实的借鉴意义

2010年7月21日,美国总统奥巴马签署了《多德-弗兰克华尔街改革和消费者保护法案》,该法案正式生效。文章对该法案的内容进行了解析,详细介绍了该法案在促进金融稳定、重塑银行业监管格局、加强对大型银行的监管、强化金融消费者权益保护、完善银行业及金融市场基础设施监管等核心内容方面的立法宗旨和具体措施,并进一步阐述了该法案对完善我国金融监管的重要借鉴意义。     

Trading volume and stock market volatility: The Polish case

Relying on the mixture of distributions hypothesis (MDH), this paper investigates the relationship between daily returns and trading volume for 20 Polish stocks. Our empirical results show that in the majority of cases volatility persistence tends to disappear when trading volume is included in the conditional variance equation, which is in agreement with the findings of studies on developed stock markets. However, we cannot confirm the testable implications of the MDH in all cases, which indicates that future research on the causes and modeling of Polish stock market volatility is necessary.     

Declining required reserves,funds rate volatility,and open market operations

The standard view of the monetary transmission mechanism rests on the central bank's ability to manipulate the overnight interest rate by controlling reserve supply. In the 1990s, there was a significant decline in the level of reserve balances in the US accompanied at first by an increase in federal funds rate volatility. However, following this initial rise, volatility declined. In this paper, we find evidence of structural breaks in volatility. We estimate a Tobit model of temporary open market operations and conclude that there have been changes in the Desk's reaction function that played a major role in controlling volatility.     

Firm specific and macro herding by professional and amateur investors and their effects on market volatility

We find a herding tendency among both amateur and professional investors and conclude that the propensity to herd is lower in the professionals. These results are obtained both when we consider herding into individual stocks and herding into stocks in general. Herding depends on the firm’s systematic risk and size, and the professionals are less sensitive to these variables. The differences between the amateurs and the professionals may be attributable to the latter’s superior financial training. Most of the results are consistent with the theory that herding is information-based. We also find that the herding behavior of the two groups is a persistent phenomenon, and that it is positively and significantly correlated with stock market returns’ volatility. Finally, herding, mainly by amateurs, causes market volatility in the Granger causality sense.     

Stock market liberalization and return volatility: Evidence from the emerging market of Sri Lanka

This study examines the impact of liberalization of the Sri Lankan stock market on return volatility. We specify GARCH and TGARCH models of volatility, and estimate them using 16 years of weekly returns for the period from 1985 to 2000. The results show that liberalization of the market to foreign investors significantly increased the return volatility in the Colombo Stock Exchange. Both conditional and unconditional volatility measures are the highest in the liberalization period. Negative return shocks lead to lower volatility suggesting that there is no leverage effect, and this appears to reflect the very low levels of leverage used by Sri Lankan companies.     

Capital and resolution policies: The US interbank market

We develop an empirically based simulation study to test two types of policies designed to control systemic risk: preventive policies targeting capital requirements and mitigation policies targeting default resolution. We find that capital buffers reduce both the number of defaults and the resulting losses. The loss reduction benefit increases as the magnitude of adverse shocks becomes higher. We find that a simple branch-breakup resolution strategy reduces the loss borne by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The mitigation effect becomes higher as the fraction of assets resolved through auctions and auction competitiveness increase.     

Price fluctuations,market activity and trading volume

We investigate the relation between trading activity - measured by the number of trades [iopmath latex="$N_{Delta t}$"] N _t [/iopmath] - and the price change [iopmath latex="$G_{Delta t}$"] G _t [/iopmath] for a given stock over a time interval [iopmath latex="$[t,~t+Delta t]$"] [t, t + t] [/iopmath]. We relate the time-dependent standard deviation of price changes - volatility - to two microscopic quantities: the number of transactions [iopmath latex="$N_{Delta t}$"] N _t [/iopmath] in [iopmath latex="$Delta t$"] t [/iopmath] and the variance [iopmath latex="$W^2_{Delta t}$"] W ² _t [/iopmath] of the price changes for all transactions in [iopmath latex="$Delta t$"] t [/iopmath]. We find that [iopmath latex="$N_{Delta t}$"] N _t [/iopmath] displays power-law decaying time correlations whereas [iopmath latex="$W_{Delta t}$"] W _t [/iopmath] displays only weak time correlations, indicating that the long-range correlations previously found in [iopmath latex="$vert G_{Delta t} vert$"] |G _t| [/iopmath] are largely due to those of [iopmath latex="$N_{Delta t}$"] N _t [/iopmath]. Further, we analyse the distribution [iopmath latex="$P{N_{Delta t} gt x}$"] P{N _t>x} [/iopmath] and find an asymptotic behaviour consistent with a power-law decay. We then argue that the tail-exponent of [iopmath latex="$P{N_{Delta t} gt x}$"] P{N _t>x} [/iopmath] is insufficient to account for the tail-exponent of [iopmath latex="$P{G_{Delta t} gt x}$"] P{G _t>x} [/iopmath]. Since [iopmath latex="$N_{Delta t}$"] N _t [/iopmath] and [iopmath latex="$W_{Delta t}$"] W _t [/iopmath] display only weak interdependence, we argue that the fat tails of the distribution [iopmath latex="$P{G_{Delta t} gt x}$"] P{G _t>x} [/iopmath] arise from [iopmath latex="$W_{Delta t}$"] W _t [/iopmath], which has a distribution with power-law tail exponent consistent with our estimates for [iopmath latex="$G_{Delta t}$"] G _t [/iopmath]. Further, we analyse the statistical properties of the number of shares [iopmath latex="$Q_{Delta t}$"] Q _t [/iopmath] traded in [iopmath latex="$Delta t$"] t [/iopmath], and find that the distribution of [iopmath latex="$Q_{Delta t}$"] Q _t [/iopmath] is consistent with a Lévy-stable distribution. We also quantify the relationship between [iopmath latex="$Q_{Delta t}$"] Q _t [/iopmath] and [iopmath latex="$N_{Delta t}$"] N _t [/iopmath], which provides one explanation for the previously observed volume-volatility co-movement.     

Institutional spending policies: implications for future asset values and spending

University endowments, sovereign wealth funds, and foundations support spending. In this paper, we analyze how different spending policies affect future asset values and spending opportunities. We show that the covariance between the asset returns and the spending rate implied by the spending policy is important in this regard. Many of the spending policies used in practice aim at smoothing the spending level by letting current spending be a function of both current asset values and earlier spending levels. One feature of these types of spending policies is that the funds can be depleted. Depleted funds cannot support spending.     

Onshore and offshore market for Indian rupee: recent evidence on volatility and shock spillover

The article empirically examines the onshor-offshore linkages of the Indian rupee using recently developed multivariate GARCH technique. The empirical results show that the offshore non-deliverable forward market does not have mean spillover impact on onshore spot, forward and futures markets while shocks and volatilities in the non-deliverable forward market influence the onshore markets. A key finding of the study is that the magnitude of volatility spillover from non-deliverable forward to spot market has accentuated after the introduction of currency futures in India. This development could be attributable to large arbitrage between futures and non-deliverable forward market in the more recent period. The finding has critical implications for exchange rate policy and management in the Indian context. There is need for close monitoring of both the onshore and offshore markets.     

International equity market integration: Theory, evidence and implications

We survey the literature on international equity market integration. In doing so, we examine the theory of integration, the burgeoning literature on empirical evidence, and the implications. It is clear from our review that significant methodological advances in recent years have provided a new perspective on the degree of such integration. Among the most important implications of the rapidly amassing evidence of substantial integration among both the developed and the emerging markets is the need for international investors to carefully monitor the risk associated with varying benefits of diversification.     

Information technology developments and implications for national policies

A review is made of the global status of information technology (IT) development and new opportunities identified for government IT policies. Despite operational problems, IT innovations continue apace. Poor human-computer interaction, user friendliness and lack of standardization are all key issues which must be addressed. Globalization trends, east-west politicomilitary changes and third world development, all have implications for government IT policies over the coming decade—and the right directions must be pursued now to derive real benefits from IT and move towards a true information economy.