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The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the conditionally expected return on size-based portfolios in an emerging market (EM) is determined by the country’s world risk exposure. The authors analyze the degree of financial integration of 23 emerging equity markets grouped into five size portfolios using the conditional international asset pricing model with both world and domestic market risks. The authors also compare the model’s fitness on the predictability of portfolio returns by using world and EM indices.

This study investigates whether large-cap stocks are priced globally and whether mid- and small-cap stocks are strongly influenced by domestic risk factors. The authors first examine the predictability of large-, mid-, and small-cap stock portfolio returns by using global and local variables, and next compare the model fitness by using world and EM indices on the prediction of size-based stock returns. Finally, the authors test whether the world price of covariance risk is the same for different portfolios.

The authors find that the conditional expected returns of large-cap stocks should be priced by global variables. Mid- and small-cap stocks are influenced by domestic variables rather than global variables, and their returns are priced by local residual risks. The test of the conditional asset pricing model shows that the largest stocks have the smallest mean absolute pricing errors (MAE), and their pricing errors are lower in large markets than in small markets. Third, the EM index offers more predictability for the excess returns of mid- and small-cap stocks than the world market index, but the explanatory power of this index does not increase for large-cap stocks.

EMs in the past were known as segment markets, with local risk factors more important than global risk factors, suggesting significant benefits from adding EMs to global portfolios. It would be interesting to examine whether financial integration differs for various firm sizes in the markets.

This chapter examines a multifactor model for stock returns in nine Asian markets (Japan, China, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand). The authors develop a model using the market risk premium, size, book-to-market, profitability, investment, momentum, price-to-earnings ratio, and dividend yield factors for each market. The empirical results suggest that this eight-factor model can better explain the variations of stock returns than the original Fama–French three-factor model. Factor-based models using local data outperform those using data from US markets. In addition, the evidence suggests that the eight-factor model can better explain stock returns when the market is under stress.

The main purpose of this study is to examine the role of quality as a determinant of a cross-sectional variation in country-level stock returns. The study attempts to address the question: Is there any special premium for top-quality stock markets with decent profitability, indebtedness and liquidity ratios?

The computations are based on the listings of 66 country portfolios over the period between 2000 and 2013. Long/short country portfolios from sorts on characteristics related to quality are examined with asset-pricing models.

The inter-market variation in returns may be explained with profitability and debt ratios: the more profitable and the less indebted is the stock market, the better is its performance. Moreover, the performance of country-level value, size and momentum strategies may be improved by double sorting on quality characteristics.

The practical implications include such issues as the global asset allocation, the development of investment products, asset pricing and investment performance measurement. The country selection strategies that are based on leverage and profitability prove to be a useful tool for investors with a global investment mandate. Furthermore, additional sorting on quality metrics may markedly improve the performance of inter-market value, size and momentum strategies.

This paper examines the role of quality metrics related to financial leverage, profitability and liquidity in explaining the cross-sectional variation in country returns.

The global financial crisis of 2007/2008 interrupted the process of financial integration observed in the European Union since the beginning of the 2000s. This paper empirically analyzes whether financial integration resumed, focusing on the period 2002–2015 and employing the indicators of the speed and the level of integration. The analysis covers four financial markets (the money, foreign exchange, bond, and equity markets) of the selected inflation-targeting Central European economies (the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland), representatives of new euro area countries (Slovenia and Slovakia) and the selected advanced Western European economies (Austria, Germany, Portugal) with the euro area. The results reveal that the global financial crisis caused mainly a temporary price divergence of the financial markets in the analyzed countries vis-à-vis the euro area. By 2015 the situation on the financial markets returned gradually to the pre-crisis degree of integration with the euro area for most of the countries and markets; however, there are signs of fragmentation on the government bond markets.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between gold–platinum price ratio (GP) and stock returns in international stock markets. The study addresses three empirical questions: (1) Does GP have robust predictive power in international stock markets? (2) Does GP outperform other macroeconomic variables in international stock markets? (3) What is the relationship between GP and stock market returns during economic recessions?

The study mainly uses OLS regressions to perform empirical tests for a comprehensive set of 17 advanced international stock markets and overall world market. The monthly data is used for the period January 1978 to July 2019, 499 observations for each market.

The study finds that the first-difference of GP (ΔGP), not the initial-level of GP, has strong predictive power for stock returns, both in short- and long-time horizons. The results remain robust after controlling for a number of macroeconomic predictors. The out-of-sample test results are significant, confirming the robustness of the predictive power of ΔGP.

This study is the first to examine the ability of the ΔGP to predict stock returns, and provide novel evidence on the relationship between ΔGP and international stock markets. The study draws on behavioral finance theory, specifically the myopic loss aversion, the herd effect and the limited attention theory, to explain the predictability of stock returns in international stock markets.

This study finds evidence that a stock return is inversely correlated with downside risk, confirming a pattern of risk-aversion behavior. Evidence from testing a stock return's response to a change in economic policy uncertainty indicates a significantly negative effect in the Chinese stock market; this conclusion holds true for testing the impacts of changes in fiscal and monetary policy uncertainties. However, the data produce a mixed effect for the change in fiscal policy uncertainty. The evidence produced from examining the geopolitical effect on the stock market strongly supports the presence of an adverse effect on stock market performance.

The purpose of this paper in this context is to examine the impact of asset liquidity on real estate equity returns, after taking well-documented systematic risk factors into account. Due to their unique characteristics, real estate equities constitute an inherently low degree of underlying asset liquidity.

Following the Fama-French time-series regression approach, the authors extend the conventional asset pricing model by a real estate-specific asset liquidity factor (ALF), using a sample of 244 real estate equities.

The results, based on monthly data for the period 1999-2012, reveal that asset liquidity is a relevant pricing factor which contributes to explaining return variations in real estate equity markets. Accordingly, investors expect a risk premium from listed real estate companies with a low degree of asset liquidity, which is especially the case for companies facing financial constraints and during economic downturns. Furthermore, an investment strategy exploiting differences in the underlying asset liquidity yields considerable average excess returns of upto 8.04 per cent p.a.

Considering the findings presented in this paper, asset liquidity should receive special attention from investors, as well as from the management boards of listed real estate companies. While investors who ignore the magnitude of asset liquidity may systematically misprice real estate equities, management can influence the firm’s cost of capital by adjusting the underlying asset liquidity.

This is the first study to examine the role of an ALF in a real estate asset pricing framework.

This study aims to investigate the market timing strategy in different market conditions (i.e. up, down, normal and in-financial-crisis situation) in the emerging market of Pakistan over the period 1995 to 2015. Furthermore, this study tests the validity of the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) and Fama and French model.

This study considers monthly stock returns of 167 firms and constructs six different portfolios on the basis of different size and book to market ratio. The Treynor and Mazuy model is used to capture the market timing strategy.

The results indicate evidence of the market timing in normal market conditions. However, there is less supportive evidence of market timing in up-market, down-market and in-financial-crisis situations. This study also confirms the validity of the capital asset pricing model and Fama and French three-factor model with strong support of value premium and size premium in the stock market.

The findings of this study are helpful to companies in estimating the cost of issuing equity more accurately. The investors can use market timing to make their investment in a more better and profitable manner.

Unlike other previous studies, this study considers an extended period to test the validity of the capital asset pricing model and Fama and French model. In addition, this study is novel in testing the marketing timing of the firms in the context of emerging economy of Pakistan.

This study explores the economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis on herding behaviour in the Australian equity market by considering liquidity, government interventions and sentiment contagion.

This study utilizes a daily dataset of the top 500 stocks in the Australian market from January 2009 to December 2021. Both predictive regression and portfolio approaches are employed to consider the impact of COVID-19 on herding intention.

This study confirms that herding propensity is more pronounced at the beginning of the crisis and becomes less significant towards later phases when reverse herding is more visible. Investors herd more toward sectors with less available information on financial support from the government during the financial meltdown. Conditioning the stock liquidity, herding is only detectable during highly liquid periods and high-liquid stocks, which is more observable during the initial phases of the crisis. Further, the mood contagion from the United States (US) market to Australian market and asymmetric herding intention are evident during the pandemic.

This is the first study to shed further light on the impact of a health crisis on the trading behaviour of Australian investors, which is driven by liquidity, public information and sentiment. Notwithstanding the theoretical contributions to the prior literature, several practical implications are proposed for businesses, policymakers and investors during uncertainty periods.

The authors consider a variety of cryptocurrency and equity risk factors as potential forces that drive cryptocurrency returns and carry risk premiums. In a cross-section of 2,000 biggest cryptocurrencies during 2014–2020, only downside market risk, cryptocurrency size and cryptocurrency policy uncertainty factors are systematically priced with significant premiums. Cryptocurrencies, which have greater exposures to these factors, yield higher returns subsequently. Equity market risk, particularly equity downside market risk, appears to be more important than cryptocurrency market risk, suggesting greater linkages between cryptocurrency and equity markets than we used to think. Global and the US equity factors are more relevant for the cryptocurrency market than local factors from other markets. However, there is no evidence that exposure to momentum, volatility and Fama–French factors is compensated by higher returns.