Oil shocks,US economic uncertainty,and emerging stock markets

This paper investigates the impacts of oil price shocks and US economic uncertainty on emerging equity markets within a structural VAR model. I find that both precautionary oil demand and US economic uncertainty shocks have significant negative effects on emerging stock returns, whereas aggregate demand shocks cause a sustained rise of the returns. In particular, the direct effects of oil shocks on emerging stock returns are amplified by the endogenous response of US economic uncertainty. Variance decomposition analysis shows that oil market fundamentals and US economic uncertainty are an important determinant of emerging equity returns, accounting for 35% and 24% of their long-term variations, respectively. The heterogeneous impacts of structural shocks on individual emerging markets, however, suggest that a well-diversified portfolio can be obtainable.     

US economic policy uncertainty and co-movements between Chinese and US stock markets

This paper investigates the impact of innovations in US economic policy uncertainty on the co-movements of China's A/B stock markets with the US stock market. We show that it is the absolute changes in the US economic policy uncertainty index that have a negative impact on the co-movements. The finding is robust to the asymmetric effects of non-policy-uncertainty shocks, to a break in the correlation structure, and to the four Chinese A/B stock markets investigated. Our results provide the first evidence regarding how stock market correlations are driven by policy-related uncertainty shocks in the international context.     

Price uncertainty,future markets and correlation

This paper examines the optimal trade and hedging decisions of a competitive exporting firm which faces concurrently hedgeable exchange rate risk and non‐hedgeable inflation risk. The macroeconomic interaction between exchange rate and domestic inflation rate risk is described by a state variable. The (strong) correlation is pivotal in determining the optimal risk management. It is shown how optimal hedging strategies are affected by state‐dependent preferences of the firm. The optimal hedge policy is to minimize the variation of marginal utility of final wealth across states of nature instead of minimizing the variance of final wealth.     

Evolutionary stable stock markets

Summary. This paper shows that a stock market is evolutionary stable if and only if stocks are evaluated by expected relative dividends. Any other market can be invaded in the sense that there is a portfolio rule that, when introduced on the market with arbitrarily small initial wealth, increases its market share at the incumbents expense. This mutant portfolio rule changes the asset valuation in the course of time. The stochastic wealth dynamics in our evolutionary stock market model is formulated as a random dynamical system. Applying this theory, necessary and sufficient conditions are derived for the evolutionary stability of portfolio rules when relative dividend payoffs follow a stationary Markov process. These local stability conditions lead to a unique evolutionary stable portfolio rule according to which assets are evaluated by expected relative dividends (with respect to the objective probabilities).Received: 7 October 2003, Revised: 18 January 2005, JEL Classification Numbers: G11, D52, D81. Correspondence to: Klaus Reiner Schenk-HoppéWe are grateful to Jarrod Wilcox and William Ziemba for valuable comments. Financial support by the national center of competence in research Financial Valuation and Risk Management is gratefully acknowledged. The national centers in research are managed by the Swiss National Science Foundation on behalf of the federal authorities.     

Forecasting volatility in the Chinese stock market under model uncertainty

Volatility forecasting is an important issue in empirical finance. In this paper, the main purpose is to apply the model averaging techniques to reduce volatility model uncertainty and improve volatility forecasting. Six GARCH-type models are considered as candidate models for model averaging. As to the Chinese stock market, the largest emerging market in the world, the empirical study shows that forecast combination using model averaging can be a better approach than the individual forecasts.     

A note on uncertainty, liquidity, and stock prices

This paper presents theory and some empirical evidence on the relationship between the demands for money and stocks and bonds in the presence of changes in the volatility of money growth. Theoretically, it is shown that with variable velocity, an increase in the conditional variance of money growth triggers an increase in the demand for money relative to stocks and bonds with a consequent reduction in stock and bond prices. Empirically, the model only performs well in the dimension of stocks and bond prices moving in the same direction.     

Cointegration networks in stock markets

We use a novel approach based on a combination of network and cointegration analysis to examine linkages between stock markets across market cycles. Our results show that long-run linkages are likely to be global rather than regional and that market turbulence increases linkages. However, we find no widespread common stochastic trends between markets and neither are we able to draw a conclusion that major financial markets display influences network linkages.     

Oil shocks,policy uncertainty and stock returns in China

This paper examines the interdependence of China's policy uncertainty, the global oil market and stock market returns in China. A structural VAR model is estimated that shows that a positive shock to economic policy uncertainty in China has a delayed negative effect on global oil production, real oil prices and real stock market returns. Shocks to oil market‐specific demand significantly raise China's economic policy uncertainty and reduce the real stock market returns. As measured by a spillover index, the interdependence between these variables has been rising since 2003 as China's influence in the oil market has increased. An equivalent spillover index calculated for the US is smaller and has been largely flat over time.     

Return threshold model analysis of two stock markets： Evidence study of Italy and Germany＇s stock returns

This paper discusses the model construction and the association between the Italy and the Germany＇s stock markets. The period of study data is from January 3, 2000 to June 30, 2008. This paper also utilizes Student＇s t distribution to analyze the proposed model. The empirical results show that the two stock markets are mutually affected each other, and the dynamic conditional correlation （DCC） and the bivariate asymmetric-GARCH （1, 2） model is appropriate in evaluating the relation between them. The empirical result also indicates that Italy and Germany＇s stock markets show a positive relationship. The average value of correlation coefficient equals to 0.8424, which implies that the two stock markets return volatility have a synchronized influence on each other. In addition, the empirical result also shows that there is an asymmetrical effect between Italy and the Germany＇s stock markets, and demonstrates that the good news and bad news of the stock returns＇ volatility will produce the different variation risks for Italy and the Germany＇s stock price markets.     

Consumption and stock markets in Asian economies

This paper investigates the causal links between stock market performance and consumption for five Asian economies by applying the bound tests of Pesaran et al. and lag augmented VAR of Toda and Yamamoto . We find two‐way causal relationships between stock market performance and consumption in the cases of Hong Kong and Taiwan in the long run. The existence of such two‐way causal links indicates that stock market performance and consumption mutually affect each other, implying that the previous studies may have overestimated the wealth effect of the stock markets without taking account of the reverse causation from consumption to the stock markets. The short‐run effect of the stock market on consumption is more visible than the long‐run effect in most of the sample economies, suggesting that changes in consumption directly reflect stock market fluctuations.     

The asymmetric price adjustment between REIT and stock markets in Asia-Pacific markets

This paper applies the threshold error correction model to examine the relationship for real estate investment trusts (REITs) and stock, and their asymmetric adjustment behaviors in six Asian/Pacific financial markets: Australia, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Korea, and Hong Kong. Our results show that there has been long-term equilibrium in REIT and stock indices in most of these markets. To earn exceptional profits, it is recommended that investors can sell (buy) the REITs when the indices of REITs are lower (higher) than equilibrium in Australia, Singapore and Taiwan; on the other hand, they should sell (buy) when the REIT market goes up (down) in Hong Kong and Japan. A causality test revealed that previous information about stocks predicted changes in the REITs in all the Asian/Pacific markets. One can also find that the lead–lag relationships are significant. The threshold EC model predicts two-way causality under both the regimes for the financial markets in most countries during all the sample periods. In addition, the adjustment speeds for the stock indices are faster than that for the REIT indices as disequilibrium occurs. This paper also finds that the previous mentioned trading strategies generally remained the same during the period of sub-prime mortgage crisis. However, the threshold EC model predicts one-way causality for both the regimes for the financial markets in most countries during this crisis period. In addition, we also find that the severe shock in REIT markets led investors in Australia and Taiwan to be more conservative during this period. The REIT indices had more effect on stock indices after the sub-prime mortgage crisis. According to the empirical results, we can infer that the degree of market imbalance and the occurrence of the sub-prime mortgage crisis induce the changes in the investment behavior of market participants.     

Time-varying synchronization of European stock markets

We study intraday comovements among three developed (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom) and three emerging (the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland) European stock markets. When applying a Dynamic Conditional Correlation GARCH model to 5- min tick intraday stock price data (2003–2006), we find a strong correlation between the German and French markets and also between these two markets and the UK stock market. However, very little systematic positive correlation during a trading day can be detected between the developed and emerging stock markets, or within the emerging group itself. Hungary exhibits higher correlation with the developing markets and the emerging markets and its dynamics show an increasing trend; Poland and the Czech Republic produce less clear-cut results.     

Forward markets and the multiproduct,multifactor firm under price uncertainty

In this paper a competitive firm producing multiple outputs with multiple inputs is examined. All input and output prices are uncertain, and forward markets exist for all prices. The firm's optimal production and forward market strategies are analyzed.     

Economic policy uncertainty,financial markets and probability of US recessions

We use probit recession forecasting models to assess the ability of economic policy uncertainty indexes developed by Baker et al. (2013) to predict future US recessions. The model specifications include policy indexes on their own, and in combination with financial variables, such as interest rate spreads, stock returns and stock market volatility. Both in-sample and out-of-sample analysis suggests that the policy uncertainty indexes are statistically and economically significant in forecasting recessions at the horizons beyond five quarters. The index based on newspaper reports emerges as the best predictor, outperforming the term spread at the longer forecast horizons.     

Common trends and common cycles in stock markets

In this paper we examine the role of permanent and transitory shocks in explaining variations in the S&P 500, Dow Jones and the NASDAQ. Our modeling technique involves imposing both common trend and common cycle restrictions in extracting the variance decomposition of shocks. We find that: (1) the three stock price indices are characterized by a common trend and common cycle relationship; and (2) permanent shocks explain the bulk of the variations in stock prices over short horizons.     

A re-examination of financial development,stock markets development and economic growth

This study provides new evidence on the role of financial development and stock market development in accounting for economic growth across geographic regions and income groups. To derive feasible policy implications, we estimate not only unbalanced panel regressions with period fixed effects, but also variance decompositions of annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rates to examine what proxy measures are most important in economic growth over time and how much they contribute to economic growth. We find distinct direction, timing and strength of the causal links between financial development, stock market development and economic growth based on the results of Granger causality tests. Therefore, it may be necessary to make different efforts to achieve steady economic growth across geographic regions and income groups.     

Stochastic dominance relationships between stock and stock index futures markets: International evidence

In this paper, we first modify the stochastic dominance (SD) test for risk averters proposed by Davidson and Duclos (2000) to be the SD test for risk seekers. We then adopt both tests to examine the SD relationships between stock indices and their corresponding index futures for 10 countries. The sample contains data from 6 developed countries and 4 developing countries. The study proposes that there should be no SD relationship between spot and futures markets in developed financial markets in which arbitrage opportunities (both pure and quasi) are rare and short-lived. However, we expect that SD relationships could be found in emerging financial markets that have more impediments to arbitrage. Consistent with this conjecture, our study finds that there are no SD relationships between spot and futures markets in the mature market sample, implying that these markets could be efficient. However, for the emerging markets, spot dominates futures for risk averters, while futures dominate spot for risk seekers in the second- and third-order SD. These results indicate that there are potential gains in expected utilities for risk averters (seekers) if they switch their investment from futures (spot) to spot (futures) in the emerging markets.