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This chapter examines dynamic connectedness among emerging Asian equity markets as well as explores their linkages vis-à-vis other major global markets. We find that international equity markets are tightly integrated. Measuring connectedness based on a generalized Vector Autoregressive (VAR) model, more than half of all total forecast error variance in equity return and volatility shocks come from other markets as opposed to country own shocks. When examining the degree of connectedness over time, we find that international stock markets have become increasingly connected, with a gentle upward trend since the Asian financial crisis (AFC) but with a rapid burst during the global financial crisis (GFC). Despite the growing importance of Asian emerging markets in the world economy, we find that their influence on advanced economies are still relatively small, with no significant increase over time. During the past decade, advanced markets have been consistently net transmitters of shocks while emerging Asian markets act as net receivers. Based on the nature of equity shock spillovers, we also find that advanced countries are still tightly connected among themselves while intraregional connectedness within Asia remains strong. By investigating whether uncertainty plays an important role in explaining the degree of stock market connectedness, we find that economic policy uncertainty (EPU) from the US is an important source of financial shock spillover for the majority of international equity markets. In contrast, US financial market uncertainty as proxied by the VIX index drives equity market spillovers only among advanced economies.

The paper aims to study the importance of financial market development and financial structure in explaining the financial policies of firms in emerging market countries.

The paper uses a panel data of 32 countries and the system generalized method of moments approach.

The analysis shows that stock market development is associated with higher use of external finance relative to internal finance, while bond market development is associated with lower use of external finance relative to internal finance. The findings of this study also indicate that stock market development tends to shift the policies of firms towards less debt and more equity, and bond market development is associated with higher debt and less equity in emerging economies.

The value of this study is in respect of its contribution to the extant literature on corporate financial policies in emerging market economies.

The uncertainty as to whether investments in riskier and less efficient markets allow managers to ‘beat the market’ remains a question to which answers are required. Accordingly, the purpose of this chapter is to offer new insights on portfolios of the US, European and Emerging Market (‘EM’) domiciled equity mutual funds whose objectives are the investment in emerging economies, and specifically analyses two main issues: alpha generation and the influence of the funds’ characteristics on their risk-adjusted performance.

The dataset is made up a survivorship-bias controlled sample of 137 equity funds over the period January 2004 to December 2014, which are then grouped into equally weighted portfolios according to the scheme’s origin. The Jensen’s (1968) Single-Factor model along with the Fama and French’s (1993) and Carhart’s (1997) multifactor models are employed to authenticate results and answer both research questions.

Research analysis reveals that EM exposed fund managers fail to collectively outperform the market. It thereby offers ground to believe that the emerging world is very close to being efficient, proving that the Efficient Market Hypothesis (‘EMH’) ideal exists in this scenario where market inefficiency might only be a perception of market participants as any apparent opportunity to achieve above-average returns is speedily snapped up by very active managers. Overall these managers take a conservative approach to portfolio construction, whereby they are more unperturbed investing in large cap equity funds so as to lessen somewhat the exposure towards risks associated with liquidity, stability and volatility.

Furthermore, the findings show that large-sized equity portfolios have the lead over the medium and small-sized competitors, whilst the high cost and mature collective investment vehicles enjoy an alpha which although is negative is superior to their peers. The riskiest funds generated the lowest alpha, and thereby produced doubts as to whether investors should accept a higher risk for the hope of earning higher returns, at least when aiming to gain an exposure into the emerging world.

Mutual fund performance is not an innovative topic so to speak. Nonetheless, researchers and academia have centred their efforts on appraising the behaviour of fund managers domiciled primarily in developed and more efficient economics, leaving the emerging region highly uncovered in this respect. This study, therefore aims at crafting meaningful contributions to the literature as well as to the practical perspective.

Amid benign monetary policy in mature market countries and high liquidity‐induced demand, lower risk premia have encouraged risk diversification into alternative asset classes outside the scope of conventional investment. The development of derivative markets in emerging economies plays a special role in this context as more institutional money is managed on a global mandate, with more and more capital being dedicated to emerging market equity. This paper aims to focus on these issues.

This paper reviews the recent development of equity derivative markets in emerging Asia and informs a critical debate about market practices and prudential supervision. Goal of the paper is also to outline essential elements and key policy considerations in developing derivative markets.

The supervision of emerging derivative markets depends on the expedient and tractable resolution of challenges arising from consistent risk management, risk mutualization, and prudential standards that guarantee market stability in crisis situations. In particular, further efforts are needed in areas of cash market liquidity, trading infrastructure as well as legal and regulatory frameworks based on a set of coherent principles for capital market development.

The paper offers a comprehensive set of principles for the development of equity derivative markets based on the current state of equity derivative trading in emerging Asia. Given current efforts by national regulators in the region to implement comprehensive guidelines on derivatives and revise short selling restrictions, the scope of this paper has topical appeal from the perspective of market participants and regulators.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the performance of US mutual funds that invest primarily in emerging market equities and bonds.

The study adopts the Morningstar classification of mutual funds and uses the Lipper US Mutual Fund Database through FactSet to obtain monthly returns and various metrics for emerging market equity and bond mutual funds covering the period from January 2000 to May 2017. Several descriptive statistics for these funds are reported as well as various risk-adjusted performance measures. Alphas are computed for different sub-periods using different factor models to mitigate potential biases.

The results show that diversified emerging market funds generate some significant alphas for their investors during the study period. Emerging market bond funds, on the other hand, do not provide any significant positive alphas; mostly alphas are negative. An analysis of sub-period performance suggests that these funds do not consistently provide excess returns, showing great variations from one period to another.

The emerging market funds provide US investors with an alternative source of exposure for their portfolios. Emerging markets differ from developed markets on a wide range of market and economic characteristics, including size, liquidity, and regulation. This study contributes to the scarce literature on these types of funds and provides a comprehensive performance assessment against various benchmarks during a period that encompasses significant bear and bull markets across the world.

This study examines the market reaction to the World Health Organization (WHO) announcement of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) as a global pandemic on the emerging equity markets and compares the reaction with developed markets. This study also compares the market reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic with the market reactions to the 2008 global financial crisis.

Using the Morgan Stanley Capital International daily stock indices data and the Carhart and the GARCH(1,1) models for an event study, the authors examine the cumulative abnormal returns during 30 and 10 trading days and the extended 60 days before and after the WHO pandemic announcement. It also compares the market reactions during the COVID-19 pandemic with the reactions to the Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy announcement during the 2008 global financial crisis.

This study finds that the COVID-19 pandemic had a significantly greater negative impact to the stock markets in emerging countries than in the developed countries. The negative impact on the emerging markets is more pronounced for firms with small market capitalizations and for growth stocks. The negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is stronger in the energy and financial sectors in both emerging and developed markets. The positive impact of the COVID-19 pandemic occurred in healthcare and telecommunications for the emerging markets and information technology for the developed markets. This study also finds that the equity markets in both emerging and developed countries recovered faster from the COVID-19 pandemic relative to the 2008 global financial crisis.

Investors' desire to diversify their risks across different countries and sectors in the emerging markets could bring superior returns. The diversification strategies bring critical financial supports to forestall the contagion of COVID-19, to protect lives, and to save the emerging economies, especially for those financially constrained countries that are facing twin health and economic shocks by channeling their investments to countries with weak healthcare systems.

This study extends the literature that examines market reactions to stock market shocks by examining the market reactions to the COVID-19 outbreak on the emerging and developed equity markets across different market capitalizations, valuation and sectors. This study also finds that the markets recovered quicker from the COVID-19 pandemic announcement than during the 2008 global financial crisis.

Summarizes the net capital flows from industrial to developing/transitional countries 1970‐1996 and recent changes in their equity and bond markets; and identifies the factors affecting these portfolio flows and risk/return behaviour in OIC stock markets. Uses monthly stock return data from ten OIC countries to demonstrate that despite their volatility they might offer opportunities for portfolio diversification; and uses cointegration methods to investigate the dynamic relationships between them. Discusses the causes of the Asian currency crisis and its impact on these stock marekts; and considers what trade and development policies OIC countries should adopt to improve their economies.

This chapter measures financial integration in 10 industries over 4 different periods. We use two robust measures of integration: (i) the Pukthuanthong and Roll (2009)’s multi-factor R-square and (ii) the Volosovych (2011)’s integration index. Both measures, based on PCA, indicate that the difference between the level of integration over the period 2009–2012 (“Post-Lehman” era) and the level of integration over the period 1994–1998 (“Post-Liberalizations” era) is relatively high. In addition, the level of financial integration across international equity markets decreased during the late 1990s. This suggests that de jure integration does not necessarily improve de facto integration. Overall, our findings give rise to a “diversification benefits-insurance benefits trade-off.”

This study aims to investigate the impact of sentiment shocks based on US investor sentiments, bearish and bullish market conditions. Earlier studies, though very few, only consider the effect of investor sentiments on stock returns of emerging frontier Asian (EFA) markets.

This study uses the application of regime switching model because of its capability to explore time-varying causality across different regimes unlike traditional linear models. The Markov regime switching model uses regime switching probabilities for capturing the potential asymmetries or non-linearity in a model, in this study’s case, thereby adjusting investor sentiments shocks to stock market returns.

The results of the Markov regime switching method suggests that US sentiment, bullish and bearish market shocks act as a main contributors for inducing variation in EFA stock market returns. The study’s non-parametric robustness results highlight an asymmetric relationship across the mean series, whereas a symmetric relationship across variance series. The study also reports Thailand as the most sensitive market to global sentiment shocks.

The sensitivity of the EFA markets to these global sentiment shocks highlights their sensitivity and implications for investors relying merely on returns correlation and spillover. These findings also suggest that spillover from developed to emerging and frontier equity markets only in the form of returns following traditional linear models may not be appropriate.

This paper supports the behavioral aspect of investors and resultant spillover from developed market sentiments to emerging and frontier market returns across international equity markets offering more rational justification for an irrational behavior.

The study’s motivation to use the application of regime switching models is because of its capability to explore time-varying causality across different regimes unlike traditional linear models. The Markov regime switching model uses regime switching probabilities for capturing the potential asymmetries or non-linearity in a model, in the study’s case, thereby adjusting investor sentiments shocks to stock market returns. It is also useful of the adjustment attributable to exogenous events.

The beta coefficient used for the cost of equity calculation is at the heart of the valuation process. This study conducts comparative analyses of the classical capital asset pricing model (CAPM) and downside CAPM risk parameters to gain further insight into which risk parameter leads to better performing risk measures at explaining stock returns.

The study conducts a comparative analysis of 16 risk measures at explaining the stock returns of 4531 companies of 20 developed and 25 emerging market index for 2000–2018. The analyses are conducted using both the global and local indices and both USD and local currency returns. Calculated risk measures are analyzed in a panel data setup using a univariate model. Results are investigated in country-specific and model-specific subsets.

The results show that (1) downside betas are better than CAPM betas at explaining the stock returns, (2) both risk measure groups perform better for emerging markets, (3) global downside beta model performs better than global beta model, implying the existence of the contagion effect, (4) high significance levels of total risk and unsystematic risk measures further support the shortfall of CAPM betas and (5) higher correlation of markets after negative shocks such as pandemics puts global CAPM based downside beta to a more reliable position.

The data are limited to the index securities as beta could be time varying.

Results overall provide insight into the cost of equity calculation and emerging market assets valuation.

The framework and methodology enable us to compare and contrast CAPM and downside-CAPM risk measures at the firm level, at the global/local level and in terms of the level of market development.