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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants of portfolio equity flows to the Sub-Saharan African (SSA) region over the period 1996-2010.

The study uses a sample of 14 SSA countries to estimate the baseline regression through employing the system generalized methods of moment dynamic panel estimation framework. To check the robustness of the estimation results, the study further analyses the data set using the random effects-generalized least squares (EGLS) estimator. The Random effects-generalized least squares estimator is also referred to a the Estimated Generalized least Squares (EGLS) estimator.

The paper finds a significant positive relationship between financial development and portfolio equity flows. Furthermore, while the study surprisingly finds trade openness to have a significant negative relationship, political stability is found to have a significant positive relationship with portfolio equity. To check for the robustness of these results, the authors further analyse the data set using the random EGLS estimator. The result of the EGLS estimator confirms that there is a robust positive relationship between financial development and portfolio equity flows to SSA. However, the results suggest that neither trade openness nor political stability is a robust determinant of portfolio equity flows to the sub-region.

Policy measures should aim at enhancing financial sector development, political stability and rule of law. A transparent judicial system that enhances rule of law and deepens democratic governance in countries in the sub-region is critical, but even more critical is deepening the financial sector, given the important role financial development plays in portfolio equity flows as suggested by the findings. A range of measures and appropriate policy responses are therefore needed for countries that have to manage macroeconomic and financial stability risks to deepen the financial sector.

Most studies on private capital flows to SSA have focussed on foreign direct investment flows with no or scanty evidence on the drivers of portfolio equity flows. This study fills this gap in the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a new framework to test the hypothesis that portfolio model predicts a negative correlation between stock prices and exchange rates in a trivariate transmission channel for foreign portfolio equity investment.

This paper utilizes panel data for eight economies to extend the Dumitrescu and Hurlin (2012) Granger non-causality test of heterogeneous panels to a trivariate model by integrating the Toda and Yamamoto (1995) approach to Granger causality.

The evidence suggests that stock prices Granger-cause exchange rates and portfolio equity flows Granger-cause exchange rates. However, the overall panel evidence casts doubt on the explicit trivariate model of portfolio balance model. The study shows that Indonesia may be the only case where stock prices affect exchange rates through portfolio equity flows.

The proposed test does not account for potential asymmetries or structural shifts associated with the crisis period. To isolate the impact of the Asian Financial crisis, this paper rather splits the sample period into two sub-periods: pre- and post-crises. The sample period and countries are also limited due to the use of the balance of payment statistics.

The study casts doubt on the maintained hypothesis of a trivariate transmission channel, as posited by the portfolio model. Policy makers of an economy may integrate capital market and fiscal policies in order to maintain stable exchange rate.

This paper integrates a portfolio equity inflow variable into a single framework with stock price and exchange rate variables. It extends the Dumitrescu and Hurlin’s (2012) bivariate stationary Granger non-causality test in heterogeneous panels to a trivariate setting in the framework of Toda and Yamamoto (1995).

The volatile nature of foreign portfolio flows, especially flows into debt market, has large implications on financial and macroeconomic stability in recipient countries. It is necessary to identify the main drivers of portfolio investments in bond market of developing economies to design effective policies to enhance resilience of the economy and help in managing capital flow volatility. The determinants of foreign portfolio investment to Indian equity market have been examined in literature, but flows to bond market remain unexplored. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to identify the possible determinants of foreign portfolio flows to Indian bond market both in the short and in the long run.

This study carries out a time series analysis by deploying autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to cointegration of monthly data of the period from January 2002 to December 2016 for the Indian economy. A mix of pull and push factors has been analysed in this study. Domestic growth, domestic stock market performance, interest rate differential, exchange rate, volatility in exchange rate, stock market returns in other emerging economies, foreign output growth and dummy variables to trace the external developments such as global financial crisis and unconventional monetary policies of advanced economies have been used as explanatory variables.

The dominant pull factor such as interest rate differential explains the dynamics of flows in Indian bond market. The relationship between capital movements and interest rate differentials is the most accepted paradigm in international finance (Haynes, 1988). Among other domestic factors are stock market performance, volatility in exchange rates and domestic growth rates which are found to be significant drivers of foreign portfolio bond flows to India. The study also confirmed that global conditions could induce a fast outflow of capital from India.

The study concludes that both domestic factors and external factors are equally important in determining the foreign portfolio investments in the Indian debt market.

The empirical analysis conducted in this study suggests that direct and indirect measures can be taken to increase and stabilise foreign investments in the Indian bond market. Direct policy measures refer to those tools which are under the ambit of policymakers. Indirect measures comprise those tools that are not under the direct control of the fiscal and monetary authorities but require coordinated efforts of the government and private sector. In this context, strengthening of not only financial and economic but also administrative institutions will be necessary. Creditworthiness and policy credibility should be improved to address erratic foreign portfolio investment in debt market of India.

This study is an original research study. This study adds to the existing literature and is expected to guide policymakers on the specific aspect of the management of capital flows as it gets affected by changes in monetary and fiscal policies.

The purpose of this research is to understand the long‐run dynamics between returns, commodity prices, volatility, and US equity investment into Brazil. This research is prompted by the rapid increase in foreign equity investment into Brazil.

To address long‐run dynamic nature of the variables, multivariate autoregressive model is fitted for the period of January 1998 to May 2008. To achieve identification of this model, restrictions are imposed based on underlying financial theory and the nature of the data.

The paper finds consistent with a long literature, that US institutional equity investment is forecasted by past returns on the Brazilian stock index (BOVESPA). The paper also documents the important role of commodity prices in forecasting US equity flows to Brazil, a variable that has not been considered in much of existing literature. Finally, the paper uncovers a strong relationship between US equity flows to Brazil and measures of risk. The paper documents that an unexpected shock to US equity flows increases the volatility of the Brazilian equity market beyond what could be predicted by other variables in the system. The strong joint dynamics among US portfolio equity flows and the risk and return of the Brazilian equity market demonstrates the need for policy makers in Brazil to monitor short‐term portfolio flows.

There is a broad literature on the dynamics of US investment in emerging and developed markets but very little work focuses directly on Brazil. Additionally, this work is one of the first to explicitly consider the role of commodity prices on the dynamics of foreign equity flows to resource rich nations.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to dissect the dynamic linkages between foreign equity flows, exchange rates and equity returns in the Philippines.

Using a parsimonious SVARX‐GARCH model and unique daily equity flow data, this research models the relationship between net equity flows, conditional variance of stock returns and conditional variance of exchange rates.

The authors find several noteworthy results, which are unique to this study and several results that confirm existing literature. Much of existing literature on foreign equity flows into emerging economies find that foreign equity investors are trend chasers and equity flows are auto correlated. The authors confirm these finding in the Philippines and document two new and important findings. First, it was found that unexpected increases in foreign equity flows to the Philippines increases the conditional volatility of the Filipino stock market significantly over the next two weeks of trading. The second major finding is that unexpected shocks to foreign equity flows sharply increases the conditional variance of the USD/PHP exchange rate over the next two to three weeks of trading.

Taken together, the results indicate that foreign equity investment, while providing many benefits for small open economies such as the Philippines, does in the short run increase the conditional variance of both the equity market and exchange rates. Policy makers must weigh the benefits of increased risk sharing and the potential for lower costs of capital with the short‐run potential for increase swings in asset prices.

This paper is one of the only studies of its kind to test the impact of foreign equity flows on the conditional volatility of returns and exchange rates.

The author studies the role of safe assets accumulation in shaping the pattern of international capital flows.

The author combines a theoretical model and the empirical analysis. The model is a two-country open economy, while the evidence is based on a fixed-effect regression on a panel of 19 countries of the eurozone.

In an open two-country economy, a positive productivity shock raises both mean and variance of wealth accumulation rate, then, leading to a greater holding of safe assets for risk-sharing motivation. Upon financial integration, the shock can induce the outflows of net total capital. The evidence of 19 eurozone countries confirms the theory and also uncovers that the safe assets (bonds) are the dominant driver of cross-border capital flows within the eurozone.

The model can be extended to account for the impact of safe assets on the economic growth, then, analyzes the role of safe assets within financial globalization. Taking into account the impact of safe assets on the open-economy economic growth can be the next step to approach the issue.

The paper also provides important policy implication. Since a higher productivity level can raise the outflows of net total capital through the accumulation of foreign safe assets, an economy needs to increase its supply of safe asset along with upgrading its domestic productivity level. This combination is important for the long-run capital accumulation and economic growth of an economy with an increasing path of the productivity level.

The paper seeks a balance between theory and evidence on international capital flows. Moreover, the paper bridges the gap between the literature on international capital flows and the literature on safe assets. And the paper also focuses on the economies of the eurozone.

Purpose – Examine the role of institutional investors in accelerating the development of capital markets and economies abroad, the determinants of their investment, both in the domestic and foreign markets, and their importance in promoting good corporate governance practices worldwide and facilitating increased financial integration.

Methodology/approach – Review and synthesize recent academic literature (1970–2011) on the process of international financial integration and the role of foreign institutional investors in the increasingly global financial markets.

Findings – Despite the concern that short-term flow of international capital can be destructive to the emerging and developing market economies, academic evidence on a destabilizing effect of foreign investment activity is limited. Institutional investors’ systematic preference for stocks of large, well-known, globally visible foreign firms can explain the presence of a home bias in international portfolio investment.

Research limitations – Given the breadth of the two literature streams, only representative studies (over 45 published works) are summarized.

Social implications – Regulators of emerging markets should first improve domestic institutions, governance, and macroeconomic fundamentals, and then deregulate domestic financial and capital markets to avoid economic and financial crises in the initial stages of liberalization reforms.

Originality/value of paper – A useful source of information for graduate students, academics, and practitioners on the importance of foreign institutional investors.

The purpose of this paper is twofold; first, to understand the long‐run dynamics between returns, valuation measures and foreign investment in the USA; second, to determine if these dynamics change following financial market upheaval.

To address long‐run dynamic nature of the variables, multivariate autoregressive models are fitted for the period of January 1977 to November 2008. To gain additional insight about the nature of equity flows its dynamics are analyzed over the periods containing the 1987 stock market crash and the two major asset bubbles, e.g. internet bubble and the housing bubble.

The authors find that foreign institutional equity flows are more sensitive to innovations in valuation measures than innovations to excess US market returns; and that foreign investors increase their purchases of US market capitalization following a positive innovation to measures of valuation. The results imply that the behavior of foreign institutional investors are not described by “return chasing” alone. The authors further find that in times of increased uncertainty the joint dynamics between foreign equity flows and valuation measures decouples. Finally consistent with existing literature it was found that equity flows to the USA are autocorrelated.

There is a broad literature on the dynamics of US investment in emerging and developed markets, but very little (if any) research that analyzes the dynamics of equity flows to the US, returns, and measures of valuation. Furthermore, the literature on the behavior of equity flows surrounding financial crises is scant, particularly for developed markets.

This paper aims to examine the relation between the proportion of direct investment to US total – direct and portfolio – investment abroad and their country‐specific determinants in developed and developing countries between 1997 and 2005, emphasizing the role of high‐quality accounting standards and corporate governance.

The study covers 46 developed and emerging market countries that are classified into four groups: Advanced, Asian, Central and Eastern European and Latin American. In order to eliminate the adverse effects of possible outliers in some observations on regression results, fixed effect robust regression (RR) techniques were conducted, in addition to fixed effect ordinary least squares (OLS) estimation using panel data.

It was found that the proportion of direct investment to US total investment abroad is strongly and negatively related to both high‐quality accounting standards and effective corporate governance, even after controlling for a number of variables found in previous research to be important: inflation, stock market capitalization, per capita gross domestic product, openness of destination countries’ economies and tax rates.

One major problem in international accounting research is the difficulty in obtaining of data. This problem was encountered in this study, too. Therefore, some emerging market countries are necessarily excluded from the sample.

The main focus is the contributions of accounting standards and corporate governance to explaining tradeoffs between US direct and portfolio investment in developed and developing countries. In this sense, this is – to the authors’ knowledge – the first study in this area.