Regime switching in the reactions of stock markets in Saudi Arabia to oil price variations

The study revisits the stock–oil nexus by examining the reactions of equity markets to oil price shocks at national and sectoral levels for Saudi Arabia in a time‐varying framework by employing the Markov switching EGARCH model developed by Henry (2009, Journal of Banking and Finance, 33, 405). Based on weekly data, the findings reveal that the behaviour of all stock markets switches between an expansion regime and a recession regime, with more persistence for the expansion state. Additionally, influential international events associated with stock market drops are clearly identified in the recession regime. Furthermore, there is evidence of asymmetric reactions of the equity index returns and the probabilities of transition from one state to another to oil price variations, with heterogeneous impacts across sectors and regimes. The stock markets are more sensitive to oil price decreases than to oil price increases. Although the evidence of relatively slight differences in some findings across weekdays, the study allows investors and policymakers to understand well the interactions of stock sector markets vis‐à‐vis the world oil market in a regime‐switching framework, in order to make the right decision as regards portfolio diversification and regulation of the stock markets.     

Regime‐switching in stock index and Treasury futures returns and measures of stock market stress

We investigate bivariate regime‐switching in daily futures‐contract returns for the US stock index and ten‐year Treasury notes over the crisis‐rich 1997–2005 period. We allow the return means, volatilities, and correlation to all vary across regimes. We document a striking contrast between regimes, with a high‐stress regime that exhibits a much higher stock volatility, a much lower stock–bond correlation, and a higher mean bond return. The high‐stress regime is associated with higher average values of stock‐implied volatility, stock illiquidity, and stock and bond futures trading volume. The lagged implied volatility from equity‐index options is useful in modeling the time‐varying transition probabilities of the regime‐switching process. Our findings support the notions that: (1) stock market stress can have a material influence on Treasury bond pricing, and (2) the diversification benefits of combined stock–bond holdings tend to be greater during times with relatively high stock market stress. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 30:753–779, 2010     

Managerial Compensation and Firm Value in the Presence of Socially Responsible Investors

Shareholders with standard monetary preferences will give a manager incentives to increase firm profits, which can be achieved with equity grants. When shareholders are socially responsible, in the sense that they also value corporate social performance, it is not clear which incentives the manager should receive. Yet, in a standard principal–agent model, we show that the optimal contract is surprisingly simple: it consists in giving equity holdings to the manager. This is notably because the stock price will incorporate expected profits as well as the social performance of the firm, to the extent that it is valued by shareholders. Consequently, equity holdings give the manager incentives to jointly maximize the profits and the social performance of the firm according to shareholders’ preferences. To facilitate alignment of interests, more socially responsible firms will optimally hire more socially responsible managers. We conclude that neither the shareholder primacy model nor equity-based managerial compensation is necessarily inconsistent with the attainment of social objectives.     

关于股票指数期货定价问题的思考

中国设立股指期货迫在眉睫 ,而定价问题是建立股票指数期货市场的核心问题。作者首先介绍了通过持仓成本定价模型确定股指期货理论价格 ,进而对模型的假设条件是否成立进行了探讨 ,并对建立中国股指期货市场提出了几点政策建议。     

Stock index futures trading and volatility in international equity markets

This article examines stock market volatility before and after the introduction of equity‐index futures trading in twenty‐five countries, using various models that account for asynchronous data, conditional heteroskedasticity, asymmetric volatility responses, and the joint dynamics of each country's index with the world‐market portfolio. We found that futures trading is related to an increase in conditional volatility in the United States and Japan, but in nearly every other country, we found either no significant effect or a volatility‐dampening effect. This result appears to be robust to model specification and is corroborated by further analysis of the relationship between volatility, trading volume, and open interest in stock futures. An increase in conditional covariance between country‐specific and world returns at the time of futures listing is also documented. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 20:661–685, 2000     

Why Doesn't the Black‐‐Scholes Model Fit Japanese Warrants and Convertible Bonds?

In this paper, we investigate the systematic departures of traded prices of Japanese equity warrants and convertible bonds from their theoretical Black–Scholes values. We briefly consider transactions costs and the dilution adjustment as potential explanations of the discrepancy. However, our major focus is on shifts in volatility of the prices of the underlying stocks as a function of the stock price changes; such shifts are not taken into account in the Black–Scholes values. We assume that the pseudo‐probability distributions of prices of stocks of cross‐sections of companies which are roughly similar in size are identical. This simple assumption, which can be generalized, enables us to infer the implied probability distribution and binomial tree for stock price changes using the Derman and Kani (1994), Rubinstein (1994) and Shimko (1993) approach. The cross‐section of warrant prices implies an inverse volatility smile and a positively skewed probability density for stock prices. Rubinstein's identifying assumptions generate an implied binomial tree in which the relative size of up‐steps and down‐steps, and thus volatility, changes systematically as stock prices change. We briefly consider potential explanations for the implied behaviour, and for the difference in the smile pattern between index options and the warrants and convertibles.     

金融危机背景下汇市与股市关系实证研究

本文建立了由上证综指、汇率、利率与道·琼斯指数构成的多变量VAR模型,运用Granger因果检验、脉冲响应函数与方差分解技术分析了金融危机背景下外汇市场与股票市场关系.实证分析结果表明:我国金融市场上汇率变动对股票价格有明显的短期作用,而股票价格变动对汇率没有影响;美国股市波动对我国股市的短期冲击超过人民币汇率对股市的冲击;我国的利率调整对汇率有短期效应,但对股票价格无影响.     

Market integration and contagion: Evidence from Asian emerging stock and foreign exchange markets

This paper examines whether Asian emerging stock markets (India, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan, and Thailand) have become integrated into world capital markets since their official liberalization dates by estimating and testing a dynamic integrated international capital asset pricing model (ICAPM) in the absence of purchasing power parity (PPP) using an asymmetric multivariate GARCH(1,1)-in-Mean approach. Also examined in this paper is whether there are pure contagion effects between stock and foreign exchange markets for each Asian country during the 1997 Asian crisis. The empirical results show that first, both currency and world market risks are priced and time-varying, suggesting that an international asset pricing model under PPP and constant price of risk might give rise to model misspecification. Second, the stock markets for India, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, and Thailand were segmented from the world capital markets before their liberalization dates, but all six markets have become fully integrated since then. Third, the market liberalization has reduced the cost of capital and price volatility for most of the countries. Finally, as for the contagion effects, strong positive impact of return shocks originating from the domestic stock market to its foreign exchange market during the crisis is found. This dynamic relationship between stock market and foreign exchange market is consistent with stock-oriented exchange rate models.     

The role of financial investors in determining the commodity futures risk premium

I develop and test a model to study the interaction between the commodity and stock markets. This study attempts to clarify the debate about the effect of financialization on commodity markets. Theoretically, the futures risk premium is determined by hedging pressure, stock market returns, and the commodity–equity correlation. Empirically, the effect of the stock market on the energy market became significantly greater for the futures risk premium in the period following the 2008 crisis. Furthermore, hedging pressure is a strong explanatory variable for the futures risk premium in various circumstances.     

TIME‐CHANGED MARKOV PROCESSES IN UNIFIED CREDIT‐EQUITY MODELING

This paper develops a novel class of hybrid credit‐equity models with state‐dependent jumps, local‐stochastic volatility, and default intensity based on time changes of Markov processes with killing. We model the defaultable stock price process as a time‐changed Markov diffusion process with state‐dependent local volatility and killing rate (default intensity). When the time change is a Lévy subordinator, the stock price process exhibits jumps with state‐dependent Lévy measure. When the time change is a time integral of an activity rate process, the stock price process has local‐stochastic volatility and default intensity. When the time change process is a Lévy subordinator in turn time changed with a time integral of an activity rate process, the stock price process has state‐dependent jumps, local‐stochastic volatility, and default intensity. We develop two analytical approaches to the pricing of credit and equity derivatives in this class of models. The two approaches are based on the Laplace transform inversion and the spectral expansion approach, respectively. If the resolvent (the Laplace transform of the transition semigroup) of the Markov process and the Laplace transform of the time change are both available in closed form, the expectation operator of the time‐changed process is expressed in closed form as a single integral in the complex plane. If the payoff is square integrable, the complex integral is further reduced to a spectral expansion. To illustrate our general framework, we time change the jump‐to‐default extended constant elasticity of variance model of Carr and Linetsky (2006) and obtain a rich class of analytically tractable models with jumps, local‐stochastic volatility, and default intensity. These models can be used to jointly price equity and credit derivatives.     

International financial integration: Stock return linkages and volatility transmission between Vietnam and advanced countries

This paper investigates the interdependence between the Vietnamese stock market and other influential equity markets in terms of return linkage and volatility transmission covering the period including pre, during and post the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. A VAR model is utilized to estimate the conditional return linkage among these indices and a GARCH-BEKK model is employed to investigate the volatility transmission. We find evidence of statistically significant correlation, return spillover and volatility linkage between Vietnamese stock market with other leading equity markets of the US, Hong Kong and Japan. Moreover, we find that during the financial crisis, stock markets become more interrelated.     

The Contributions of Professors Fischer Black,Robert Merton and Myron Scholes to the Financial Services Industry

This paper is written as a tribute to Professors Robert Merton and Myron Scholes, winners of the 1997 Nobel Prize in economics, as well as to their collaborator, the late Professor Fischer Black. We first provide a brief and very selective review of their seminal work in contingent claims pricing. We then provide an overview of some of the recent research on stock price dynamics as it relates to contingent claim pricing. The continuing intensity of this research, some 25 years after the publication of the original Black–Scholes paper, must surely be regarded as the ultimate tribute to their work. We discuss jump‐diffusion and stochastic volatility models, subordinated models, fractal models and generalized binomial tree models for stock price dynamics and option pricing. We also address questions as to whether derivatives trading poses a systemic risk in the context of models in which stock price movements are endogenized, and give our views on the ‘LTCM crisis’ and liquidity risk.     

Quantile information share

This paper presents a new method to estimate Hasbrouck-type market information share in price discovery. The prevailing market information share is calculated on the basis of conditional mean. We propose a conditional quantile regression approach to obtain a new market information share measure, quantile information share, which varies across the combinations of different price quantiles. The method is illustrated with two data sets, one on the spot and futures markets in pricing S&P 500 equity index, and the other on price discovery for a cross-listed stock.     

Estimates of the cost of equity for public utilities, 1961–1976

Using a simple version of the dividend cash flow (DCF) model of stock valuation, the cost of equity for public utilities is often inferred to be equal to the sum of the dividend yield and the expected rate of growth in dividends. Witnesses who employ this approach generally extrapolate past growth patterns into the future and then assume that investors expect these trends to continue; no effort is made to actually assess the expectations of investors. This approach to estimating the cost of equity for public utilities is criticized for the failure to develop testable hypotheses as an inferential basis for testing the statistical reliability of estimates of the cost of equity. This article demonstrates an alternative to the traditional approach, based on the premise that reliable estimates of the cost of equity are derived only within a methodological framework that produces testable hypotheses. The Gordon model of share valuation is formulated in such a way as to show that there is a systematic and predictable relationship between the ratio of market price to book value of common stock and a firm's normal or expected return on equity. This relationship suggests an econometric model that not only tests the Gordon model of share valuation but produces at the same time, inferences concerning the cost of equity. Using this approach, year-end estimates of the cost of equity for electric utilities are determined for the 16-yr period from 1961 to 1976.     

Pricing models of equity swaps

This article provides a generalized formula for pricing equity swaps with constant notional principal when the underlying equity markets and settlement currency can be set arbitrarily. To derive swap values using the risk‐neutral valuation method, the swap payment is replicated at each settlement date by constructing a self‐financing portfolio. To obtain the foreign equity index return denominated in the domestic or in a third currency, equity‐linked foreign exchange options are used to hedge the exchange rate risk. It is found that if the swap involves international equity markets, then the swap value contains an extra term which reflects the currency hedging costs. This methodology can easily be applied to price various types of equity swaps simply by modifying the specifications of the model presented here as required. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 23:751–772, 2003     

Industry and country factors in emerging market returns: Did the Asian crisis make a difference?

Should investors diversify across emerging stock markets or across industries to achieve improvements in their risk–return tradeoffs especially during financial crisis periods? We examine the issue using individual firm data from a selection of emerging markets and including the period of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. We find that country effects were the dominant force behind the low co-movements among emerging stock market returns. There is evidence of increased industry effects beginning at the time of the Asian financial crisis, but this may have been a temporary phenomenon associated with contagion effects during the crisis.     

The Value of Imputation Tax Credits on Australian Hybrid Securities

Hybrid securities are becoming an increasingly important component of the capital structure of Australian firms. While displaying characteristics of both debt and equity, one principal equity attribute of hybrids is their ability to pay franked dividends. This enables resident domestic investors to claim corporate tax payments as a credit against personal tax obligations under Australia's dividend imputation tax system. This paper estimates a value for the ‘franking credits’ that attach to hybrid securities by examining stock price changes around ex‐dividend dates. We add to the literature that examines the ex‐day price changes of ordinary shares (OS) in that the hybrid securities we examine have high dividend yields and are relatively insensitive to market movements. Therefore the signal‐to‐noise ratio is much higher than for OS. Our analysis reveals that cum‐dividend day prices on hybrid securities do not include any value for franking credits. This result is consistent with the notion that the price‐setting investor in the Australian market is a foreign investor who places no value on franking credits.     

Lévy betas: Static hedging with index futures

This study considers calibration to forward‐looking betas by extracting information on equity and index options from prices using Lévy models. The resulting calibrated betas are called Lévy betas. The objective of the proposed approach is to capture market expectations for future betas through option prices, as betas estimated from historical data may fail to reflect structural change in the market. By assuming a continuous‐time capital asset pricing model (CAPM) with Lévy processes, we derive an analytical solution to index and stock options, thus permitting the betas to be implied from observed option prices. One application of Lévy betas is to construct a static hedging strategy using index futures. Employing Hong Kong equity and index option data from September 16, 2008 to October 15, 2009, we show empirically that the Lévy betas during the sub‐prime mortgage crisis period were much more volatile than those during the recovery period. We also find evidence to suggest that the Lévy betas improve static hedging performance relative to historical betas and the forward‐looking betas implied by a stochastic volatility model.     

Equity swaps in a LIBOR market model

This study extends the BGM (A. Brace, D. Gatarek, & M. Musiela, 1997) interest rate model (the London Interbank Offered Rate [LIBOR] market model) by incorporating the stock price dynamics under the martingale measure. As compared with traditional interest rate models, the extended BGM model is both appropriate for pricing equity swaps and easy to calibrate. The general framework for pricing equity swaps is proposed and applied to the pricing of floating‐for‐equity swaps with either constant or variable notional principals. The calibration procedure and the practical implementation are also discussed. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 27:893–920, 2007     

Stock Price Informativeness and Corporate Governance: An International Study

This study investigates the cross‐country relationship between firm‐level corporate governance and stock price informativeness. Using firm‐level data from 22 developed countries, we find that stock price informativeness, as measured by firm‐specific stock return variation and future earnings response coefficients, increases with the quality of a firm's corporate governance. Further analyses show that all mechanisms except board‐related governance relate positively to stock price informativeness. Finally, firm‐level corporate governance plays a more significant role in strengthening the stock return–earnings associations for firms in countries with strong institutional environments. This evidence highlights the role of country‐level legal investor protections in shaping the relationship between firm‐level corporate governance and stock price informativeness.