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Capital markets thrive on information, and the information revolution has transformed these markets all over the world. Investors can now keep track of the movements of capital markets in real-time and they react to the flow of information from around the world. One of the concerns of stock market investors is whether the markets operate efficiently, independently, and with sound fundamentals. However, real market movements tend to exhibit a link as is evident from recent market movements across the world.

The assessment of interdependence between stock markets is an important aspect of international portfolio management. The aim of this chapter is to examine the shock and volatility spillover between the Standard and Poor’s 500 (S&P500) index from the United States (US) Stock Exchange and the Istanbul Stock Exchange 100 (BIST100) index from the Stock Exchange Istanbul.

S&P500 index, which is the most important index representing US markets, and BIST100 index, which is the index representing the Turkish market, were used as variables in this study. In the analysis, the causality in variance test was applied to determine the volatility spillover between these two markets. Later, multivariate GARCH (MGARCH) models were used to measure the volatility spillover in the markets. VAR(1)-GARCH (1,1)-Diagonal BEKK model was applied to the daily data to determine the shock and volatility spillover in the markets.

As a result of the variance causality test, it was found that there is a bi-directional volatility spillover between S&P500 index and BIST100 index. When the return spillover between the markets is examined, a one-way spillover from the S&P500 index to the BIST100 index emerged. Diagonal BEKK model results show that each market is affected by its own news (unexpected shocks) and volatility. Furthermore, the volatility is persistent for both markets. These findings demonstrate that the US market and the Turkish market interact with each other.

We document three new facts about gender differences in executive compensation. First, female executives receive lower share of incentive pay in total compensation relative to males. This difference accounts for 93% of the gender gap in total pay. Second, the compensation of female executives displays lower pay-performance sensitivity. A $1 million dollar increase in firm value generates a $17,150 increase in firm-specific wealth for male executives and a $1,670 increase for females. Third, female executives are more exposed to bad firm performance and less exposed to good firm performance relative to male executives. We find no link between firm performance and the gender of top executives. We discuss evidence on differences in preferences and the cost of managerial effort by gender and examine the resulting predictions for the structure of compensation. We consider two paradigms for the pay-setting process, the efficient contracting model and the “managerial power” or skimming view. The efficient contracting model can explain the first two facts. Only the skimming view is consistent with the third fact. This suggests that the gender differentials in executive compensation may be inefficient.

We examine the influence of ownership structure on a blockholder’s power in a firm. We first describe the presence and ownership stakes of blockholders in a comprehensive sample of US firms. We develop a measure of the influence of the ownership structure on a blockholder’s power and show that an average blockholder loses 12% of her potential power due to the presence and size of the ownership stakes of other blockholders. Further, the influence of ownership structure varies systematically with a blockholder’s rank and identity, with the second and nonfamily manager blockholders experiencing the largest loss of power.

This study examines transmission of U.S. equity markets returns and volatility into Brazilian equity and labor markets. Monthly closing prices of U.S. S&P500 and Bovespa indexes are used to proxy U.S. and Brazilian equity market returns. Brazilian monthly unemployment rates and the average wage index are used to measure U.S. equity market spillovers on foreign labor markets. Using a vector autoregression (VAR) model, a unidirectional return and volatility transmission from the U.S. to Brazil is found. The evidence also indicates that there is a weaker but significant lagged spillover of U.S. stock returns and volatility to the Brazilian labor market.

Purpose – The aim of this chapter is to examine the constant proportion portfolio insurance (CPPI) method when the multiple is allowed to vary over.

Methodology/approach – A quantile approach is introduced under the dependent return hypothesis. We use for example ARCH-type models.

Findings – In this framework, we provide explicit values of the multiple as function of the past asset returns and other state variables. We show how the multiple can be chosen to satisfy the guarantee condition, at a given level of probability and for particular market conditions.

Originality/value of paper – We show in this chapter that it is possible to choose variable multiples for the CPPI method if quantile hedging is used and in the case of dependent log returns. Upper bounds can be calculated for each level of probability and according to state variables. This new multiple can be determined according to the distributions of the risky asset log return and volatility.

In this chapter the author studies the capital market efficiency hypothesis and checks whether the stock price adjustment dynamics is instantaneous, continuous, and linear or not. In particular, the author proposes to analyze the stock price evolution while taking into account the presence of transaction costs, the coexistence of heterogeneous investors, and the interdependence between stock markets. On the one hand, he provides strong evidence to suggest that the efficiency hypothesis is rejected. On the other hand, he proves that the stock index adjustment is rather discontinuous, asymmetrical, and nonlinear. Using threshold cointegration techniques, he proposes a new nonlinear modeling to reproduce the CAC40 adjustment dynamics that not only replicates the French market adjustment dynamics in the presence of market frictions but also captures the interdependence between the French and American stock markets, highlighting the reaction of French shareholders in relation to the changes in the behaviour of American speculators.

Our chapter raises serious questions about the long-term efficiency of stock prices in relation to the realized returns of the underlying corporate real assets. In our large-scale calculations that cover horizons of 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 years, returns on corporate real assets suffer a long-term decline, and have been below the yields of 10-year Treasury bonds since 1973. Real assets that received more external financing from capital markets and institutions actually report even lower realized long-term returns. The decline in realized returns cannot be attributed to declining risks as the volatilities of realized returns have been increasing over time. These surprising results may stimulate fresh debate on the roles and long-term performance of capital markets and institutions.

The purpose of this study is to contribute to existing financial literature within a less researched area through a systematic, organized, and holistic approach. This study advances the notion of considering terrorist attacks as a heterogeneous group of events by employing a multidimensional approach. The event study methodology was used to investigate the impact of 46 terrorist attacks occurring on the soil of OECD countries since 1990 on stock markets in US, UK, Spain, and Denmark. Thereby, terrorist attacks are considered as events conveying information to financial markets, which is processed by investors and subsequently reflected in security prices. This chapter is the first contribution within financial literature to distinguish and categorize terrorist attacks through several dimensions and investigate the effect of various characteristics on stock markets. The multidimensional analytical approach consisted of six dimensions, which included an examination of the national stock markets, differences across industries, the underlying threat characteristics, the size of the attack, and the development over time and geospatial aspects. It is concluded that terrorist attacks exhibiting international threat characteristics result in significantly larger and boundary spanning negative abnormal returns, which impact stock markets beyond the country in which the attack occurred. Additionally, the size of the terrorist attack amplifies the negative impact on stock markets. However, while the impact on stock markets was found to be immediate indicating that stock markets are quick and efficient in absorbing new information, the negative impact is likely to evaporate within five trading days.

The implied volatility surface is the collection of volatilities implied by option contracts for different strike prices and time-to-maturity. We study factor models to capture the dynamics of this three-dimensional implied volatility surface. Three model types are considered to examine desirable features for representing the surface and its dynamics: a general dynamic factor model, restricted factor models designed to capture the key features of the surface along the moneyness and maturity dimensions, and in-between spline-based methods. Key findings are that: (i) the restricted and spline-based models are both rejected against the general dynamic factor model, (ii) the factors driving the surface are highly persistent, and (iii) for the restricted models option Δ is preferred over the more often used strike relative to spot price as measure for moneyness.