What Determines Stock Returns? - A Comparative Study of the Effects of Fiscal, Monetary and Trade Variables


Book Description

The present paper tries to analyze the macroeconomic determinants of stock returns in a relative context using monthly data from 1999 to 2013 for a panel of emerging economies, India and China. Using modern panel data time series techniques, the paper tries to examine the relative impact of industrial production, inflation, interest rate and balance of trade on stock market returns. Using the superior Fully Modified Ordinary Least Square (FMOLS) method, it is found that inflation and balance of trade are the most important factors affecting the stock returns of India, China and the panel, followed by industrial production and rate of interest.




Stock Market Volatility


Book Description

Up-to-Date Research Sheds New Light on This Area Taking into account the ongoing worldwide financial crisis, Stock Market Volatility provides insight to better understand volatility in various stock markets. This timely volume is one of the first to draw on a range of international authorities who offer their expertise on market volatility in devel




International Trade and International Finance


Book Description

This book brings together a collection of papers on international trade and international finance, instead of treating the two as disjoint fields of study. The volume, while focusing on the recent developments and frontiers of research in international trade and international finance, also emphasizes the inherent integrated nature of the two subjects; some of the papers are overlapping across the two areas. A unique feature of the proposed volume is that it unravels some new issues in addition to re-examining certain old issues in a new perspective and thus covers wide ranging issues with an emphasis on policy. The book covers issues mostly relating to emerging market economies, which has increasingly assumed importance in the context of globalization. The book contains some survey papers covering the frontiers of current knowledge on important themes like recent developments in trade theory and empirics, foreign exchange market, institutions in trade and finance, interrelation and interaction between international trade and international finance. The papers, fruit of rigorous and original research, are written by internationally and nationally reputed authors along with promising young researchers on the subjects. The book substantially contributes to the growing literature on issues relating to trade and international finance in emerging market economies and extends the frontiers of knowledge. The book is expected to have the widest possible readership comprising of advanced undergraduate and graduate students as well as senior researchers working in international trade and international finance.




The Statistical Mechanics of Financial Markets


Book Description

A careful examination of the interaction between physics and finance. It takes a look at the 100-year-long history of co-operation between the two fields and goes on to provide new research results on capital markets - taken from the field of statistical physics. The random walk model, well known in physics, is one good example of where the two disciplines meet. In the world of finance it is the basic model upon which the Black-Scholes theory of option pricing and hedging has been built. The underlying assumptions are discussed using empirical financial data and analogies to physical models such as fluid flows, turbulence, or superdiffusion. On this basis, new theories of derivative pricing and risk control can be formulated.




Asia-Pacific Financial Markets


Book Description

This volume of "International Finance Review" focuses on the Asia-Pacific financial markets. A total of 22 original papers, not published elsewhere, have been selected from a competitive field. These papers utilize a variety of methods, including theoretical, empirical and qualitative to highlight a range of issues across the region. Several papers offer combinations of these different categories and among the empirical papers, there are a wide variety of datasets analyzed. While China does play a significant part in the analysis of five of the papers in this volume (this is to be expected given its importance in the region), a host of other countries are also considered. This ensures the volume is truly international in its scope. These papers each serve to contribute to the knowledge on a particular issue related to the financial markets within this region and for this volume, three main issues have been identified: integration, innovation and challenges. Articles are contributed by experts in their fields. It is truly international in scope.




Handbook of Heavy Tailed Distributions in Finance


Book Description

The Handbooks in Finance are intended to be a definitive source for comprehensive and accessible information in the field of finance. Each individual volume in the series should present an accurate self-contained survey of a sub-field of finance, suitable for use by finance and economics professors and lecturers, professional researchers, graduate students and as a teaching supplement. The goal is to have a broad group of outstanding volumes in various areas of finance. The Handbook of Heavy Tailed Distributions in Finance is the first handbook to be published in this series. This volume presents current research focusing on heavy tailed distributions in finance. The contributions cover methodological issues, i.e., probabilistic, statistical and econometric modelling under non- Gaussian assumptions, as well as the applications of the stable and other non -Gaussian models in finance and risk management.




Indian Stock Market


Book Description

India is one of the major emerging economies of the world and has witnessed tremendous economic growth over the last decades. The reforms in the financial sector were introduced to infuse energy and vibrancy into the process of economic growth. The Indian stock market now has the largest number of listed companies in the world. The phenomenal growth of the Indian equity market and its growing importance in the economy is indicated by the extent of market capitalization and the increasing integration of the Indian economy with the global economy. Various schools of thought explain the behaviour of stock returns. The Efficient Market Theory is the most important theory of the School of Neoclassical Finance based on rational expectation and no-trade argument. The book investigates the growth and efficiency of the Indian stock market in the theoretical framework of the Efficiency Market Hypothesis (EMH). The main objective of the present study is to examine the returns behaviour in the Indian equity market in the changed market environment. A detailed and rigorous analysis, made with the help of the sophisticated time series econometric models, is one of the key elements of this volume. The analysis empirically tests the random walk hypothesis and focuses on issues like nonlinear dynamics, structural breaks and long memory. It uses new and disaggregated data on recent reforms and changes in the market microstructure. The data on various indices including sectoral indices help in measuring the relative efficiency of the market and understanding how liquidity and market capitalization affect the efficiency of the market.




The Handbook of News Analytics in Finance


Book Description

The Handbook of News Analytics in Finance is a landmarkpublication bringing together the latest models and applications ofNews Analytics for asset pricing, portfolio construction, tradingand risk control. The content of the Hand Book is organised to provide arapid yet comprehensive understanding of this topic. Chapter 1 setsout an overview of News Analytics (NA) with an explanation of thetechnology and applications. The rest of the chapters are presentedin four parts. Part 1 contains an explanation of methods and modelswhich are used to measure and quantify news sentiment. In Part 2the relationship between news events and discovery of abnormalreturns (the elusive alpha) is discussed in detail by the leadingresearchers and industry experts. The material in this part alsocovers potential application of NA to trading and fund management.Part 3 covers the use of quantified news for the purpose ofmonitoring, early diagnostics and risk control. Part 4 is entirelyindustry focused; it contains insights of experts from leadingtechnology (content) vendors. It also contains a discussion oftechnologies and finally a compact directory of content vendor andfinancial analytics companies in the marketplace of NA. Thebook draws equally upon the expertise of academics andpractitioners who have developed these models and is supported bytwo major content vendors - RavenPack and Thomson Reuters - leadingproviders of news analytics software and machine readablenews. The book will appeal to decision makers in the banking, finance andinsurance services industry. In particular: asset managers;quantitative fund managers; hedge fund managers; algorithmictraders; proprietary (program) trading desks; sell-side firms;brokerage houses; risk managers and research departments willbenefit from the unique insights into this new and pertinent areaof financial modelling.




Geopolitical Risk on Stock Returns: Evidence from Inter-Korea Geopolitics


Book Description

We investigate how corporate stock returns respond to geopolitical risk in the case of South Korea, which has experienced large and unpredictable geopolitical swings that originate from North Korea. To do so, a monthly index of geopolitical risk from North Korea (the GPRNK index) is constructed using automated keyword searches in South Korean media. The GPRNK index, designed to capture both upside and downside risk, corroborates that geopolitical risk sharply increases with the occurrence of nuclear tests, missile launches, or military confrontations, and decreases significantly around the times of summit meetings or multilateral talks. Using firm-level data, we find that heightened geopolitical risk reduces stock returns, and that the reductions in stock returns are greater especially for large firms, firms with a higher share of domestic investors, and for firms with a higher ratio of fixed assets to total assets. These results suggest that international portfolio diversification and investment irreversibility are important channels through which geopolitical risk affects stock returns.