In this paper we employ variance ratio tests of the random walk hypothesis to investigate the interdependence of global equity markets in terms of the predictability of equity index returns and how the clustering pattern has evolved in recent years. The study is based on almost 15 years of daily returns of free float-adjusted market capitalization equity indices from 46 countries. First, we exa...

Using “A” shares accessible only to local investors (who account for 99% of stock investors in China), this paper tests if short-horizon contrarian and intermediate-horizon investment strategies generate abnormal profits. We find statistically significant abnormal profits for both the arbitrage portfolio-investment strategies. Detailed analysis indicates that: (1) an absolute dominance of non-i...

This paper investigates if bankruptcy of Japanese listed companies can be predicted using data from 1992 to 2005. We find that the traditional measures, such as Altman’s (1968) , Ohlson’s (1980) and the option pricing theorybased distance-to-default, previously developed for the US market, are also individually useful for the Japanese market. Moreover, the predictive power is substantially enha...

This paper assesses liquidity conditions in foreign exchange (FX) spot and derivatives markets using intra-day data against the background of FX dealers’ response to recent regulatory changes. Given that FX swap markets are by some measures even deeper that the spot market, an assessment of FX liquidity requires taking such instruments into account. We find that spot and swap market liquidity i...

This paper investigates the liquidity effect in asset pricing by studying the liquiditypremium relationship of an American Depositary Receipt (ADR) and its underlying share. Using the Amihud (2002) measure, the turnover ratio and trading infrequency as proxies for liquidity, we show that a higher ADR premium is associated with higher ADR liquidity and lower home share liquidity, in terms of cha...

Established illiquidity measures are constructed for emerging markets in Africa and used to determine which best explain trading costs. Costs of equity are derived from an augmented CAPM for a sample of emerging financial markets generally ignored in the literature. These include: South Africa and Namibia, three countries in North Africa and four in SSA, plus London and Paris as examples of int...

Using a new hand-collected data set, this study examines the stock price manipulation in the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE). We examine the characteristics of the manipulated stocks, and their impacts on market quality. The results show that manipulated stocks tend to be small. The stock prices rise throughout the manipulation period, followed by a price reversal. The average cumulative abnormal r...

We employ a multivariate BEKK GARCH model which allows news to affect conditional volatility in an asymmetric manner. The asymmetric model outperforms the standard symmetric model, implying that efficient financial decision makers should not treat good and bad news as homogenous. We estimate the conditional variance and covariance of the Japanese yen, Swiss franc and British pound vis-à-vis the...

This paper examines the stock return performance of the IPO stocks which are listed on the Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) in Hong Kong. By using several benchmarks, over three years, this paper finds that the results produced are sensitive to the benchmark employed. The two factors causing the underperformance of GEM stocks are the ‘technology boom’ and ‘IPO effects’. This suggests that appropr...

Article history: Received 21 May 2010 Received in revised form 24 January 2012 Accepted 28 January 2012 Available online 10 February 2012 We employ high frequency data to study extreme price changes (i.e., price jumps) in the Prague, Warsaw, Budapest, and Frankfurt stock market indexes from June 2003 to December 2010. We use the price jump index and normalized returns to analyze the distributio...