Impact of Market Expectations on the U.S. Interest Rate Lift-Off in ASEAN-5 Financial System

During 2015–2016, the market has lowered its expectations on the pace and magnitude of U.S. interest rate lift-off, which should have reduced capital outflow and supported the ASEAN-5 financial markets. Yet, the ASEAN-5 financial markets have recorded mixed fortunes, possibly due to spikes in global risk (proxied by CBOE VIX index). Against the contrasting background of higher global risk and gradual interest rate lift-off, this paper investigates the impact of market expectations on U.S. interest rate on the ASEAN-5 financial markets. This paper concludes that both global risk and market expectations on interest rate lift-off affect the ASEAN-5 financial markets, whereby the negative effect of higher global risk dominates the positive effect of market expectations of gradual interest rate lift-off in the ASEAN-5 currencies and equity markets. However, it is the reverse in the ASEAN-5 sovereign bonds as the positive impact of market expectations of more gradual interest rate lift-off dominates the negative effect of higher global risk.

     

Financial Liberalization and Stock Market Efficiency: Causality Analysis of Emerging Markets

This paper studies the long- and short-run relationship between financial liberalization and stock market efficiency. It expands the extant body of knowledge by investigating Granger causality relationship applying mean group, common correlated effect mean group and common correlated effect pooled estimator to balanced panel data for 27 emerging markets over the period 1996–2011. We find evidence of financial liberalization Granger causes stock market efficiency, which is consistent with liberalization leads to efficiency hypothesis. Subsequently, our work makes a fresh contribution to the literature by focusing on informational efficiency of stock markets rather than financial development. Furthermore, we find that a negative long-term relationship between financial liberalization and stock return autocorrelation coexists with a positive short-term relationship between the two. The findings that financial liberalization, which has a deteriorated effect on stock market efficiency in the short-run, but positive impact in the long-run, allow us to draw an analogy similar to the J-curve hypothesis.     

Constructing Fama–French Factors from Style Indices: Evidence from the Islamic Equity Market

This study has contributed to the analysis of the Fama–French three-factor model by proving the validity of model using the newly constructed Fama–French factors from Malaysian Islamic stock market. With generalized method of moments and robustness tests, our results compliment earlier studies by comparing the results over two sub-periods, before and after the financial crises and the fall of Lehman Bros. The results of the analysis suggest that the reversal of size effects exists after periods of financial crisis. This is the first attempt to create FF factors and test the model from Islamic equity style indices.     

Does economic liberalization promote economic growth in Pakistan? An empirical analysis

The study aims to examine the short and long term impacts of economic liberalization on economic growth in case of Pakistan from 1971 to 2011. Economic liberalization consists of reforms in both trade liberalization and financial liberalization. This study contributes to the existing literature by constructing an economic liberalization index using principal component analysis. Our results show, firstly, that economic liberalization reforms have a positive impact on economic growth in the short run. However, trade liberalization is negatively associated with economic growth in the long-run. Secondly, the estimated coefficients through rolling window show that impact of economic liberalization on real GDP is unstable during the selected period of sample. This study recommends to policy makers to enhance human capital by having more expenditure on education sector. In addition, financial reforms by way of a sectoral credit allocation should be introduced to further promote the economic growth.     

Exploring the nexus between financial openness and informational efficiency – does the quality of institution matter?

This article examines the empirical link between financial openness and informational efficiency of stock markets in 27 emerging markets. Improving on earlier papers, this study has used World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) as the proxy of institutional development in dynamic panel data models estimated by generalized method of moments (GMM). Our results show, first, financial liberalization by itself has no impact on enhancing efficiency of stock market. Second, for countries with high level of institutional development, the interaction of trade openness and financial openness become significant. Third, for the same group of countries, interaction effect of financial liberalization and institutional development leads to more efficiency in stock market. Hence, our finding demonstrates the utmost importance of institutional development and its role on liberalization. Our results conclude that institutional development and trade openness are pre-requisites for a country to benefit from financial openness. Our study further provides empirical evidence to theoretical model proposed by Basu and Morey (2005) that governance is the missing link between stock market efficiency and financial liberalization. Our findings suggest that policy makers in developing economies should enhance the quality of their institution in order to optimize the benefits of financial liberalization.     

Impact of asset preferences on firm performance over its life cycle: Is agency theory or neo-classical theory more relevant?

This study extends Dickinson's (2011) firm life cycle classification approach by linking it with the asset preferences and firm performance. This study also resolves the contention between agency theory and neo-classical theory. Based on the data of S&P 500 firms from 2000 to 2019, our results show: First, the effect of current assets on basic earnings per share (BEPS), return on assets (ROA) and Tobin's Q ratio (TQR) decreases from the introduction to decline stage. Second, the influence of fixed assets on TQR increases from the introduction to the declining stage. Our findings suggest that both theories are relevant, and asset acquisition influences the productivity and performance of the firms.