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This chapter examines the increased levels of cross-asset price comovement and its relationship with the recent rounds of “extraordinary intervention” from the US Federal Reserve. The results show that, even after controlling for the preceding financial crisis, asset return volatility, investor risk perceptions, and channels of monetary stimulus, historically unrelated financial asset returns experienced abnormal changes in their conditional correlations. The strength of these cross-asset correlations is directly linked to periods of Federal Reserve interventions yet disappear when the interventions were (in fact or were perceived to be) withdrawn. Despite being studied extensively in the academic literature, no traditional intervention channels can explain the changes in cross-comovement. It is proposed that the Fed’s extraordinary stimulus caused investors to use Fed announcements as a common, low-cost information source on which they used to make common portfolio-allocation decisions. The changes in comovement during the intervention period may have reduced investor welfare for those with longer-horizon allocation strategies, those not prepared for the eventual ending of the stimulus, and for underfunded liability-optimizing portfolio managers (e.g., state pension funds).

Understandings of house prices and their interrelationships have undoubtedly drawn a great amount of attention from various market participants. This study aims to investigate the monthly newly-built residential house price indices of seventy Chinese cities during a 10-year period spanning January 2011–December 2020 for understandings of issues related to their interdependence and synchronizations.

Analysis here is facilitated through network analysis together with topological and hierarchical characterizations of price comovements.

This study determines eight sectoral groups of cities whose house price indices are directly connected and the price synchronization within each group is higher than that at the national level, although each shows rather idiosyncratic patterns. Degrees of house price comovements are generally lower starting from 2018 at the national level and for the eight sectoral groups. Similarly, this study finds that the synchronization intensity associated with the house price index of each city generally switches to a lower level starting from early 2019.

Results here should be of use to policy design and analysis aiming at housing market evaluations and monitoring.

Purpose – This chapter aims to investigate the stock market comovements between Mexico and the world capital market using nonlinear modeling tools.

Methodology/approach – We apply recent nonlinear cointegration and nonlinear error correction models (NECMs) to investigate the comovements between stock prices over the recent period.

Findings – While the previous literature only highlights some evidence of time-varying comovements, our chapter aims to specify the mechanism characterizing the comovement process through the comparison of two nonlinear error correction models (NECMs). It shows a nonlinear relationship between stock prices that are activated per regime.

Originality – Studying the integration hypothesis between stock markets over the recent financial crisis, our findings highlight strong evidence of significant comovements that explain the global collapse of stock markets in 2008–2009.

Local investors have the ability to impact the stock prices and returns of local firms. However, the impact of news made by a firm on local investors and neighboring companies is absent from the academic literature. The purpose of this paper is to fill that void and examine how a local investor clientele affects the stock market reactions of firms located within the same geographic proximity as a news-generating firm.

After accounting for firm, industry, and geographic characteristics, this study examines how a firm’s dividend initiation announcement (positive news) influences stock prices of seemingly unrelated firms within the same metropolitan statistical area (MSA).

Dividend-paying firms located in areas with a higher percentage of dividend clientele experience a positive comovement reaction when a seemingly unrelated firm within the same MSA announces a dividend initiation. The positive reactions are specifically for dividend-paying firms, while non-dividend payers exhibit no significant response. These results are robust to numerous regression methods and alternative explanations.

These findings are consistent with the positive-investor-attention hypothesis, suggesting positive spillover effects from news announcements for other local firms in the presence of individual investor clientele.

This is the first study to link how news generated by one firm can influence other geographically local firms, providing evidence on the impact of individual investor clientele on stock returns of local non-news firms.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether different types of service firms, experience-based or credence-based, benefit equally from the prescription to increase advertising during recessions.

The research consists of three steps: using the Hodrick–Prescott (HP) filter to extract the cyclical component of the time series, estimating the level of cyclical comovement and estimating the relationship between comovement and stock price.

The results suggest that experience-based service firms benefit financially from adopting the advertising “prescription” that encourages firms to increase advertising during recessions. Credence-based firms, however, experience negative financial returns when they implement the advertising “prescription”.

The limitations are data from US firms and a smaller sample size. The use of the HP filter may be considered a limitation, as other filtering methods may be utilized. The results suggest that academics’ and practitioners’ advertising “prescription” is not a one-size-fits-all strategy for service firms.

Managers must be aware that the type of service their firm provides influences whether increasing or decreasing advertising spending during a recession has a positive or negative impact on financial performance. Credence-based firms, such as those in the banking and insurance industries should avoid increasing advertising spending during recessions, as it may lead to negative financial performance. Experience-based firms, such as those in the entertainment and travel industries, benefit financially from increased advertising during recessions.

This research is first to investigate the differential impact of recessionary advertising on service firms.

The purpose of this paper to provide a discussion of the empirical evidence and contributing factors of the synchronization of house prices globally.

The author reviewed the main studies on house price synchronization and conducted an empirical analysis using OECD house price indices. A discussion of the contributing factors of synchronization, with a focus on the demand and supply dimensions is provided, and synchronization across both countries and cities is examined.

Housing markets globally have become more synchronized; this is particularly clear for cities. The sustained demand for places that are attractive for financial motives and for lifestyle and sometimes climate along with the fact that such places tend to be supply-constrained is likely to lead to more synchronization across markets.

The conclusions are important for investors seeking to diversify their housing holdings internationally. The discussion should also benefit policy-makers.

To date, very scarce evidence exists on the synchronization of house prices globally. By surveying the results contained in previous studies and providing a thorough discussion of the possible drivers of house price synchronization, this study contributes to a better understanding of this important topic.

During the global financial crisis of 2008–2009, most developed and emerging economies and financial markets have recorded important financial losses. Those economies have experienced momentous corrections, and their assets were significantly devaluated, implying many losses and bankruptcies for banks, investors, and firms. Overall, despite continuing efforts made by governments and central banks to support their financial systems, most financial markets (stock markets, derivative markets, monetary markets, and currency markets) have been strongly affected by this crisis. Furthermore, the rapid transmission of the US subprime crisis to several European and Asian developed and emerging countries and the transformation into a global financial and economic crisis have revealed a high level of financial integration and linkage with the US market. The financial shocks have also induced negative feedbacks to macroeconomic indicators, suggesting significant relationships between financial markets and macroeconomies.

This paper reappraises the global and regional integration for 6 Southeast Asian stock markets. A time‐varying analysis based on Barari (2004) suggests that Malaysia, South Korea and Thailand have shown significant movement towards international financial integration.The estimates based on TARCH model imply significant support for returns and volatility spillover effects from the World as well as regional markets to all the stock markets except Pakistan. The stock market liberalization measures such as First Country Fund, First Depository Receipt, and First Cross Listing appeared to have induced more positive return spillover effects from the World to India, Indonesia and South Korea. These results have policy implication for the international portfolio investors in sense that portfolio diversification advantages are rather less in Malaysia, South Korea compared to India and Pakistan which still provide higher returns through portfolio diversification.

This study aims to examine the multiscale predictability power of COVID-19 deaths and confirmed cases on the S&P 500 index (USA), CAC30 index (France), BSE index (India), two strategic commodity futures (West Texas intermediate [WTI] crude oil and Gold) and five main uncertainty indices Equity Market Volatility Ticker (EMV), CBOE Volatility Index (VIX), US Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU), CBOE Crude Oil Volatility Index (OVX) and CBOE ETF Gold Volatility Index (GVZ). Furthermore, the authors analyze the impact of uncertainty indices and COVID-19 deaths and confirmed cases on the price returns of stocks (S&P500, CAC300 and BSE), crude oil and gold.

The authors used the wavelet coherency method and quantile regression approach to achieve the objectives.

The results show strong multiscale comovements between the variables under investigation. Lead-lag relationships vary across frequencies. Finally, COVID-19 news is a powerful predictor of the uncertainty indices at intermediate (4–16 days) and low (32–64 days) frequencies for EPU and at low frequency for EMV, VIX, OVX and GVZ indices from January to April 2020. The S&P500, CAC30 and BSE indexes and gold prices comove with COVID-19 news at low frequencies during the sample period. By contrast, COVID-19 news and WTI oil moderately correlated at low frequencies. Finally, the returns on equity and commodity assets are influenced by uncertainty indices and are sensitive to market conditions.

This study contributes to the literature by exploring the time and frequency dependence between COVID-19 news (confirmed and death cases) on the returns of financial and commodity markets and uncertainty indexes. The findings can assist market participants and policymakers in considering the predictability of future prices and uncertainty over time and across frequencies when setting up regulations that aim to enhance market efficiency.

This chapter discusses methodological challenges that may be faced by researchers interested in financial markets in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, we focus on the behaviour of investors and consider three aspects that affect their investment decision process, namely comovement, cross-sectional asset pricing, and out-of-sample forecasting. We argue that, in relation to the pandemic, relevant financial time series such as asset returns exhibit nonlinear dynamics, which should be suitably incorporated within appropriate methodological tools. We discuss possible existing approaches that ensure that those nonlinearities are properly accounted for. Finally, possible areas of future research are touched upon.