Foreign Portfolio Equity Investments, Financial Liberalization, and Economic Development

Reform of local capital markets and relaxation of capital controls to attract foreign portfolio investments (FPIs) has become an integral part of development strategy. The proximity of market openings and large, sudden shifts in international capital flows gave credence to the notion that the liberalization was the primary culprit in precipitating the recent Asian crisis. Hence, this paper reassesses the benefits and costs of FPIs from the perspective of the recipients. Specifically, it discusses the various FPI contributions and presents empirical evidence regarding the relationship between FPIs and market development, degree of capital market integration, cost of capital, cross-market correlation and market volatility. It is clear that the evidence on benefits of FPIs is strong, whereas the policy concerns regarding resource mobilization, market comovements, contagion, and volatility are largely unwarranted. The authors make some policy suggestions regarding preconditions for capital market openings, market regulation, and liberalization sequencing.     

Does corporate international diversification destroy value? Evidence from cross-border mergers and acquisitions

This paper investigates the valuation effects of corporate international diversification by examining cross-border mergers and acquisitions of US acquirers over the period 1990–2000. We find that, on average, acquisitions of “fairly valued” foreign business units do not lead to value discounts. In contrast, unrelated cross-border acquisitions result in a significant diversification discount of about 24% after accounting for the valuation of foreign targets. Furthermore, significant wealth gains accrue to foreign target shareholders regardless of the type of acquisition. Overall, our results suggest that international diversification does not destroy value while industrial diversification leads to discounts even after controlling for the pre-acquisition value of the target.     

Correlation dynamics and international diversification benefits

Forecasting the evolution of security co-movements is critical for asset pricing and portfolio allocation. Hence, we investigate patterns and trends in correlations over time using weekly returns for developed markets (DMs) and emerging markets (EMs) over the period 1973–2012. We show that it is possible to model co-movements for many countries simultaneously using BEKK, DCC, and DECO models. Empirically, we find that correlations have trended upward significantly for both DMs and EMs. Based on a time-varying measure of diversification benefits, we find that it is not possible to circumvent the increasing correlations in a long-only portfolio by adjusting the portfolio weights over time. However, we do find some evidence that adding EMs to a DM-only portfolio increases diversification benefits.     

Pricing of national index funds

This article investigates the pricing behavior of national index funds (NIFs). Under barriers to capital flows in an otherwise perfect capital market, the familiar result of zero premium/discount obtains. The more realistic assumption of imperfect cross-border arbitrage suggests that in a two country setting the NIFs will sell at a premium. In a multicountry framework, the investment barriers will result in NIFs generally trading at a premium, although theoretically one cannot rule out a discount from net asset value (NAV). A simple test supports the proposition that under investment barriers, NIFs should trade at a premium to NAV after controlling for the average domestic closed-end fund discount.     

Can the Gains from International Diversification Be Achieved without Trading Abroad?

We examine whether portfolios of domestically traded securities can mimic foreign indices so that investment in assets that trade only abroad is not necessary to exhaust the gains from international diversification. We use monthly data from 1976 to 1993 for seven developed and nine emerging markets. Return correlations, mean-variance spanning, and Sharpe ratio test results provide strong evidence that gains beyond those attainable through home-made diversification have become statistically and economically insignificant. Finally, we show that the incremental gains from international diversification beyond home-made diversification portfolios have diminished over time in a way consistent with changes in investment barriers.     

Rural credit: A micro synthesis of the Salvadorean experience

Discriminant analysis is applied to distinguish non-defaulted and defaulted loans in a practical context at the Agricultural and Cattle development bank in El Salvador. The results suggest that implementation of such a model will reduce administration costs and lower default rates.     

Conditional Heteroskedasticity and Global Stock Return Distributions

This paper investigates conditional return distribution characteristics for seven developed markets (DMs) and eight emerging markets (EMs). With the exception of Germany and Japan, the behavior of monthly returns of DM sample countries is similar to that of the U.S. In contrast, EM returns exhibit a substantially greater degree of serial correlation and a higher incidence of autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (ARCH) in monthly data. Aggregation of returns into two- and three-month holding periods decreases the significance of the ARCH effects. However, there are cross-sectional differences in the rate at which ARCH effects become insignificant. The findings of ARCH in monthly returns sample data is attributed to differences in the rate at which information arrives and is transmitted into prices in each market.     

The behavior of stock prices on LDC markets

The paper investigates the behavior of stock prices for a group of well established and newly emerging LDC securities markets. The results suggest the probability distributions to be consistent with a lognormal distribution with some securities exhibiting non-stationary variance. LDC markets, even though not as efficient as major DC markets, are quite comparable to the smaller European markets and the behavior of security prices as reported in this study appears to be generalizable for the heavily traded segments of LDC markets.     

Efficiency and the programs to develop capital markets : The Brazilian experience

Recent studies suggest that the main avenue to obtain benefits of international portfolio diversification would be direct portfolio investments in the domestic securities of the various countries. There are many barriers to such investments, the most important being the nature of foreign capital markets. Given the potential for attracting foreign portfolio investments and more efficient mobilization of indigenous resources, many less developed countries (LDCs) have embarked upon programs to develop their local capital markets. Among LDCs, the Brazilian effort stands out as the most innovative and systematic. The efforts to develop the Brazilian market have been quite successful with positive effect on the mobilization and allocation of resources. It also exhibits the institutional- and other characteristics associated with developed markets. Further, the Sao Paulo exchange seems to be at least as efficient as most of the European markets. Unfortunately, the apparent shift since 1975 in government policy toward public sector dominance in the domestic savings transfer process may reverse the market development process.     

International asset pricing under segmentation and PPP deviations

We analyze the impact of both purchasing power parity (PPP) deviations and market segmentation on asset pricing and investor's portfolio holdings. The freely traded securities command a world market risk premium and an inflation risk premium. The securities that can be held by only a subset of investors command two additional premiums: a conditional market risk premium and a segflation risk premium. Our model is empirically supported with important implications for tests of international asset pricing.