Equity market valuation,systematic risk and monetary policy

This study examines the relationship between equity market valuation and risk indicators that portend economic downswings. The indicators are implied options volatility, Treasury-Eurodollar (TED) spread and exchange rate. While implied volatility captures market risk in that it reflects the fear factor embedded in the price of an option, TED spread reflects the default risk premium that is priced into a key short-term credit instrument. Equity markets often show a tendency to reflect the incidence of these risk factors. And because they provide valuable information about the health of the economy, many have argued that equity market valuation be taken into account in the formulation of monetary policy. Results of this study not only show a statistically significant inverse relationship between the stock market and these risk factors, but also evidence of a cointegration. In a variance decomposition of the series, we find that equity valuation is a major contributor to the forecast error variances of each of the risk indicators, a finding that lends tacit support to the argument that risk indicators associated with the equity market be considered in monetary policy decisions.     

金融危机背景下银行类股票β值及其稳定性的实证检验

在金融研究中,风险和收益、个股与整个股市的波动一直是人们最为关注的问题。特别是在2007年8月美国次贷危机迅速蔓延后,各个公司更加重视股市波动的研究,以求最大限度地规避风险、获得最大收益。在金融研究中,人们通常用期望值表示收益,用方差和标准差来衡量风险。而在两者的关系研究中,资本资产定价模型反映了均衡状态下单个证券的预期回报与其相对市场风险值之间的关系,也描述了证券的风险溢价与市场组合风险溢价之间的关系。选择金融危机迅速传播后的2007年8月到2011年10月21日为研究时间段,选择上海证券交易所A股市场的浦发银行（600000）等14只银行类股票为研究对象,确定它们的值,研究银行类股票与整个股市波动的相关性,说明它们的风险溢价与市场组合风险溢价之间的变动关系。考虑到在所选时间段中,2010年3月开展的融资融券业务可能会对股票值的稳定性有所影响,因此,在求出这些股票的值后,还对这些股票值的稳定性进行了Chow检验。     

Equity market information and credit risk signaling: A quantile cointegrating regression approach

Investigating linkages between credit and equity markets, we consider daily aggregate U.S. CDS spreads as well as well-chosen equity market and implied volatility indexes over ten years. We describe such robust (to spurious correlation) relationship with the quantile cointegrating regression approach. Such approach handles extreme quantiles/CDS values and their behavior with respect to the equity market's influence. Heteroskedastic patterns such as time-varying variance, but also autocorrelation, skewness and leptokurtosis are captured. Thus, the sensitivity of aggregate CDS spreads to equity market price and volatility channels is accurately measured across quantiles and spreads. Such quantile-dependent sensitivity exhibits asymmetric responses to equity market shocks. A sub-period analysis investigates potential regime shifts in estimated quantile cointegrating regressions. Quantile cointegrating coefficients vary over time and quantiles, and exhibit different magnitudes across sub-periods and spreads. Therefore, the relationship is unstable over time. We also propose a scenario analysis and risk signaling application for credit risk management prospects. Under specific risk levels, credit risky situations are described conditional on the equity market's information over time, and related expected aggregate CDS spreads are computed. Estimated conditional quantiles/CDS spreads act as credit alert triggers.     

Volatility transmission between Islamic and conventional equity markets: evidence from causality-in-variance test

This study examines whether a volatility/risk transmission exists between the Dow Jones Islamic stock and three conventional stock markets for the United States, Europe and Asia during the pre- and the in- and post-2008 crisis periods. It also explores the volatility spillover dynamics between those markets and US Monetary policy, oil prices, global financial risk and uncertainty factors. The recently developed Hafner and Herwartz (2006)’s causality-in-variance test provides evidence of risk transfers between these seemingly different equity markets, indicating a contagion between them during the full sample and the subperiods. The volatility structure of these markets is dominated by short-run volatility in the first period and by high long-run volatility in the second period. The volatility impulse response analysis indicates a similar volatility transmission pattern although it is characterized by a more volatile and short-lived structure in the second period. It also appears that the Islamic equity market responds to shocks from the risk factors and not from the oil price and the US economic policy uncertainty index during both periods.     

Volatility spillovers and the price of risk: Evidence from the Swiss stock market

This paper investigates the behavior of the risk premium on the Swiss stock market. The risk premium consists of two components, which are estimated separately: the amount of volatility and the unit price of risk. By estimating a bivariate GARCH-M model the volatility of the Swiss market is found to be strongly exposed to spillovers from the other major financial markets. To estimate the unit price of risk a Kalman filter procedure is employed, which allows for variability in this variable. Investors place a high price on risk, when the market is considered `expensive'. First version received: March 1998/final version received: July 1998     

FINANCIAL CRISES AND INTERNATIONAL STOCK MARKET VOLATILITY TRANSMISSION

This paper examines the interplay between stock market returns and their volatility, focusing on the Asian and global financial crises of 1997–98 and 2008–09 for Australia, Singapore, the UK, and the US. We use a multivariate generalised autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (MGARCH) model and weekly data (January 1992–June 2009). Based on the results obtained from the mean return equations, we could not find any significant impact on returns arising from the Asian crisis and more recent global financial crises across these four markets. However, both crises significantly increased the stock return volatilities across all of the four markets. Not surprisingly, it is also found that the US stock market is the most crucial market impacting on the volatilities of smaller economies such as Australia. Our results provide evidence of own and cross ARCH and GARCH effects among all four markets, suggesting the existence of significant volatility and cross volatility spillovers across all four markets. A high degree of time‐varying co‐volatility among these markets indicates that investors will be highly unlikely to benefit from diversifying their financial portfolio by acquiring stocks within these four countries only.     

Investor sentiment,variance risk premium and delta-hedged gains

Delta-hedged gains are supposed to be negative and represent a volatility risk premium. Using a sample of Standard & Poor 500 index options from 2006 to 2009, this study documents two anomalies that cannot be explained by the volatility risk premium. First, delta-hedged gains are more negative for out-of-money options than for at-the-money options. Second, delta-hedged gains are significantly positive during financial crisis period. We propose a behavioural explanation in which both option prices and stock prices are affected by investor’s sentiment, but pessimistic sentiment has a greater impact on stock market than option market. This asymmetric response to pessimistic mood in turn affects the relative expensiveness of option prices.     

Linear and non-linear transmission of equity return volatility: evidence from the US, Japan and Australia

This paper models the transmission of shocks between the US, Japanese and Australian equity markets. Tests for the existence of linear and non-linear transmission of volatility across the markets are performed using parametric and non-parametric techniques. In particular the size and sign of return innovations are important factors in determining the degree of spillovers in volatility. It is found that a multivariate asymmetric GARCH formulation can explain almost all of the non-linear causality between markets. These results have important implications for the construction of models and forecasts of international equity returns.     

Do financial distress and liquidity crises affect value and size premiums?

This study investigates the impact of liquidity crises on the relationship between stock (value and size) premiums and default risk in the US market. It first examines whether financial distress can explain value and size premiums, and then, subsequently, aims to determine whether liquidity crises increase the risk of value and size premium investment strategies. The study employs a time-varying approach and a sample of US stock returns for the period between January 1982 and March 2011, a period which includes the current liquidity crisis, so as to examine the relationship between default risk, liquidity crises and value and size premiums. The findings indicate that the default premium has explanatory power for value and size premiums, which affect firms with different characteristics. We also find that liquidity crises may actually increase the risks related to size and value premium strategies.     

Modelling the dependence structures of Australian iTraxx CDS index

In contrast to market expectations, the correlation between credit default swap (CDS) spreads and their respective stock prices in Australia was found to be positive. The global financial crisis (GFC) affected the nonlinear association between the two asset classes with firms experiencing financial distress and stock prices plummeting. CDSs issuers reacted to such exogenous shocks by increasing their risk premiums on their spreads, reflecting the increased inherent risk. By splitting the data into pre- and post-GFC contexts and by employing the use of Archimedean copulas, we observe a negative co-movement in the post-GFC period. This finding is robust to several equity indices. Overall, such result is critical for investors engaging in arbitrageur activities.     

Evaluating sovereign risk spillovers on domestic banks during the European debt crisis

Using a Markov-switching model with time-varying probabilities, spillovers from sovereign to domestic bank CDS spreads during the European debt crisis for a set of 14 European countries and 30 European banks are investigated. Our model is able to capture how the increased sovereign risk observed between 2010 and 2013 throughout Europe has impacted i) the probability that banks fall into a crisis regime and ii) the probability that banks stay in the crisis regime. The latter state is characterized by a high volatility and large positive returns of CDS spreads. Different regime-dependent indicators have been computed to assess heterogeneity within the region. The evidence indicates that the intensification of sovereign risk observed during the European debt crisis has positively and significantly driven the regime shifts in volatility of the bank CDS spreads due to increased risk aversion. The results show that the increase in sovereign credit risk seems to have generated second-round effects for some banks that have experienced a deterioration in their funding conditions due to a rise in the domestic sovereign default risk. Overall, our results suggest that sovereign CDS spreads can be considered good forewarning indicators for predicting the evolution of bank CDS spreads. We also find that the effects differ depending on the country and the financial institution. This result suggests that banks are heterogeneously exposed to sovereign credit risk within the same country. One argument relates to the size of these financial institutions and the domestic exposure to sovereign debt.     

Assessing downside and upside risk spillovers across conventional and socially responsible stock markets

Since the aftermath of the recent global financial crisis, socially responsible (SR) investments have become an alternative form of conventional finance, giving rise to further systemic risk between conventional and SR stock markets. In this paper, we assess this risk transmission using Value at Risk (VaR) modeling for the US, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, over the period covering January 2004–December 2016. We find that socially responsible stock markets exhibit less risk than do conventional markets in terms of the risk hedging properties induced by the SR screening. Second, contributions to systemic risk vary across market phases and return distribution levels, with a larger contribution and spillover effect during the recent global financial crisis. For example, at the downside of the distribution (CoVaR at 5%), the conventional European index shows the highest contribution to the world market’s systemic risk, while the US stock market shows the highest contribution at the upside of the distribution (CoVaR at 95%). This finding is justified by the difference in the risk aversion of investors that varies with the market state as well as the disparities in the development of SR markets.     

Return spillovers around the globe: A network approach

We study the connectedness of a sample of 40 stock markets across five continents using daily closing prices and return spillovers based on Granger causality. All possible 1560 return spillovers between 40 markets create a complex network of relationships between equity markets around the world. Apart from analyzing the topological and time-varying properties of the created networks, we also identify the determinants of the connectedness of equity markets over time. Adjusting for non-synchronous trading, our modelling approach leads to evidence that the probability of return spillover from a given stock market to other markets increases with market volatility and market size and decreases with higher foreign exchange volatility. We empirically show that the temporal proximity between closing hours is important for information propagation; therefore, choosing markets that trade during similar hours bears an additional risk to investors because the probability of return spillovers increases.     

Another Look at the Equity Risk Premium Puzzle

The model of Mehra and Prescott (1985, J. Econometrics, 22, 145–161) implies that reasonable coefficients of risk‐aversion of economic agents cannot explain the equity risk premium generated by financial markets. This discrepancy is hitherto regarded as a major financial puzzle. We propose an alternative model to explain the equity premium. For normally distributed returns and for returns far away from normality (but still light tailed), realistic equity risk premia do not imply puzzlingly high risk aversions. Following our approach, the ‘equity premium puzzle’ does not exist. We also consider fat‐tailed return distributions and show that Pareto tails are incompatible with constant relative risk aversion.     

Financial Integration Among the ASEAN 5 ＋ 3 Stock Markets： A Preliminary Look at the First 10 Years of the New Millenium

The purpose of this study is to investigate the financial integration of the stock markets of the ASEAN 5 ＋ 3 countries. These countries include Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, China, Japan, and South Korea. The research determined the stock return volatility for each country＇s index during the first decade of the new millennium. The findings showed that there is the presence of integration and co-integration with Philippine index＇s return with the index＇s returns of the following countries： Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand. Furthermore, there is evidence of volatility clustering in these stock markets. The study concluded with the policy implications of greater integration in light of the planned cross trading among four ASEAN bourses, namely, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia by 2012.     

Risks of Latin America sovereign debts before and after the financial crisis

We investigate the financial determinants of the return and volatility of sovereign CDS spread from six major Latin American countries before and after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. Other than CBOE VIX index, we also find that global factors including US Baa–Aaa default yield, TED spread and US Treasury rate all contribute to the changes in these sovereign CDS spread. Although global risk aversion (VIX) is a significant determinant of sovereign debt spread, in the years after the crisis, the emphasis has shifted towards short-term refinancing risk (TED). Furthermore, the risk of Greek sovereign debt crisis also transmitted Latin American CDS spreads immediately, but only in the post-Lehman sub-period. These findings provide implications for international bonds and credit derivatives trading strategies.     

Macroeconomic implications of financial policy

This paper studies the effects of financial policy in a model with heterogeneous agents, incomplete markets and portfolio restrictions. For an economy calibrated to replicate key aspects of the U.S. wealth distribution, we find that the quantitative effects of financial policy are relatively small. The reason is that the households determining aggregate behavior are relatively well insured and can therefore offset the actions of the firm by modifying their portfolio allocations. However, financial policy has important effects on asset prices. Whereas a higher level of debt in the capital structure of the firm introduces more risk into the economy by increasing the volatility of the equity return, it enhances the liquidity of households by increasing the supply of bonds. In an economy with a substantial amount of heterogeneity, this last effect dominates and leverage leads to a decrease in the equity premium. This is in contrast to the findings in representative agent models, in which leverage unambiguously increases the premium through a higher equity return volatility.     

Revisiting the risk-return relation in the Chinese stock market: Decomposition of risk premium and volatility feedback effect

The empirical results of the risk-return relationship are mixed for both mature and merging markets. In this paper, we develop a new volatility model to revisit the risk-return relation of the aggregate stock market index by extending the Realized GARCH model of Hansen et al. (2012) with the Wang and Yang (2013) framework, in which the overall risk-return relation is decomposed into a risk premium and a volatility feedback effect. An empirical analysis of three major Chinese stock indices reveals positive risk premium and negative volatility feedback effect, and those findings are stable across different markets and sub-samples. However, their relative magnitudes differ between markets and varies through time.     

股市收益率与波动性长期记忆效应的实证研究

股票市场长期记忆效应问题是近来金融实证研究的一个热点.多数的研究集中在收益率长期相关性的考察上,较少有对波动率序列的研究.然而,波动率的长期记忆性不仅会导致金融市场上的波动持久性特征,而且将对波动率的预测与衍生证券定价产生重要的影响.基于此,本文通过修正的R/S分析与ARFIMA模型对我国股市收益率及其波动性的长期相关性进行了实证研究.结果表明:中国股市具有显著的非线性特征,虽然收益率序列的自相关性较弱,但波动性序列却表现出显著的长期记忆效应.这一结论将为研究股票价格行为特征与金融经济学理论提供新的方向.     

Time-varying dependence structures of equity markets of China,ASEAN and the USA

Popular time-varying Copulas are used to analyse the dependence structure between the CSI 300 index return, the S&P 300 index return and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) 80 index return. Results show that these three types of stock index returns have obvious time-varying characteristics. The US sub-prime mortgage crisis has strengthened the correlation among the three-stock index returns, whereas the dependence between China and the ASEAN stock markets is more sensitive to the financial crisis. The time-varying features of the extreme dependence risk between China-ASEAN and China-US are very different.