Return and volatility interaction between oil prices and stock markets in Saudi Arabia

The paper aims at investigating the links between world oil price and stock sector markets in Saudi Arabia over the weekly period from January 10, 2007 until September 28, 2011. To that effect, we make use of the VAR-GARCH process developed by Ling and McAleer (2003), which has the advantage to address the issue of return and volatility spillovers among the series we consider. Globally, the empirical findings show evidence of return and volatility transmission between oil price and stock sectors. However, the spillover effects are unidirectional from oil to some sectors for returns, but bidirectional for volatility patterns with more apparent links from sectors to oil. The optimal weights and hedge ratios for oil/stock portfolio holdings are sensitive to the sectors considered, and allow a better understanding of the links between sectors and oil for investors who seek for investment opportunities and want to diversify their portfolios. The findings are of great interest and have important implications for investors, market participants and policy makers.     

Effects of soccer on stock markets: The return–volatility relationship

This paper assesses the effects of domestic soccer teams’ performances against foreign rivals on stock market returns as well as on the return–volatility relationship. Data from Chile, Spain, Turkey and the United Kingdom support propositions that soccer teams results in international cups affect stock market returns and the return–volatility relationship. Evidence from Spain and the UK, soccer powerhouses, suggests that losses are associated with lower returns and higher risk aversion but evidence from Chile and Turkey, where soccer is the most important sport but teams are not as successful, reveals that wins are associated with higher returns and lower risk aversion.     

China–Africa financial markets linkages: Volatility and interdependence

The China–Africa relationship has blossomed in recent years and the scale and scope of Chinese engagement and investment in the latter have expanded enormously in the last decade. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the dynamic linkages and volatility transmission mechanisms between Chinese and African stock markets in recent years while highlighting the relative importance of Chinese capital flows and investments. We utilise dynamic forecasting models including Bayesian VAR and BEKK GARCH to estimate both price and volatility behaviours of Chinese and 15 selected African stock markets. Our empirical results indicate strong evidence of spillover effects in terms of both price movement and volatility behaviour, implying that Chinese and African stock markets are showing signs of integration. For price movement, bidirectional feedback relationships between Chinese and most of the African stock markets are observed, suggesting that both Chinese and African stock markets could influence each other. China has been building a strong African partnership and, therefore, increasing its trade and investment influences in the region. Examining volatility transmissions, at least one spillover effect (shock and/or volatility) from China to most of the African stock markets is reported. This suggests that the Chinese stock market now plays an influential role across African stock markets given that it has major investments in 46 out of 54 countries. Our findings show important portfolio management implications as a surge in Chinese investments provide new portfolio diversification opportunities for international investors. Policy-wise, we believe further market-oriented reforms and carefully designed and long-term development policies are required to boost capacity for development and achieve sustainable trade and growth.     

Assessing a minimum pension guarantee for the voluntary IPS in Turkey

The returns from individual account pension plans are subject to fluctuations in capital markets. This increases income uncertainty for the beneficiary and exposes individuals to the risk of fluctuations in the economy in general and the stock market in particular. A minimum pension guarantee is a way to avoid this pitfall by providing a minimum annuity regardless of the actual investment performance of individual accounts. In this article, we present a cost analysis of a minimum benefit guarantee mechanism for the voluntary Individual Pension System in Turkey. We examine the cost estimates and the probability of providing guaranteed payments under various economic and demographic assumptions.     

The influence of extreme events such as Brexit and Covid-19 on equity markets

In this article first, we show that the result that the PIIGS group had the largest negative unadjusted and abnormal returns on the day following the Brexit Referendum is robust to taking into account jointly other extreme events such as the Covid-19. Second, we provide evidence that the impact of the declaration of Covid-19 to be a global pandemic by the WHO – when global markets fell by nearly 15% – had a total different reaction in the financial markets to the one following the Brexit Referendum, impacting more negatively in countries where quarantine lockdowns were announced that day (i.e. Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Italy and Spain), independently on their debt-to GDP ratio. We also show that the day after Covid-19 was declared as a global pandemic, China and Japan (countries that already implemented lockdowns in the previous months) were the only analyzed countries that did not experience any evidence of abnormal returns in their financial markets. Moreover, during the three following days, the US was the only analyzed country showing no evidence of negative abnormal returns due to the declaration of the national emergency. These results suggest that government policies must take into account and monitor specially health-related news at global level, since they can have enormous impacts on portfolio allocations on stock markets, in order to take more informed decisions.     

网络舆情是否影响股市行情?基于新浪微博大数据的ARDL模型边限分析

本文基于新浪微博大数据,分析互联网上的股市舆情是否影响真实世界中的股市行情。在梳理网络舆情,特别是微博影响股市的机制的基础上,我们利用具有“利好”和“利空”含义的股市术语的微博出现词频（“热词指数”）,生成股市的“微博信心指数”。“格兰杰因果检验”和“自回归分布滞后模型”（ARDL）边限检验表明：在股市震荡期,早前三天内的“微博信心指数”有助于预测上证指数;“微博信心指数”和“上证指数”存在正向相关的均衡关系;在股市行情平稳期,以上的统计关联并不存在;网络舆情通过影响入市资金流进一步影响股市行情。     

Effectiveness of policy interventions during financial crises in China and Russia: Lessons for the COVID-19 pandemic

We test the hypothesis that policy interventions in crisis periods are less effective when markets are integrated, drawing on China and Russia’s experience during the global financial crisis. We conduct an event study to examine the response of stock market returns and volatility to intervention efforts using DCC-GARCH and Markov Regime Switching Models. We then estimate the extent of integration of China and Russia with the US market and assess its impact on policy interventions’ effectiveness based on a regression framework. We find that interventions were effective in China but failed in Russia, where greater global links were evident. Our findings provide important policy lessons to address the impact of the current COVID-19 pandemic, given the increasing global market linkages.     

The cross-impact between financial markets,Covid-19 pandemic,and economic sanctions: The case of Iran

The main financial markets in the Iranian Economy include the stock exchange, foreign exchange, oil, and gold markets. The sharp fluctuations in these markets, especially those caused by the severe sanctions imposed on Iran in May 2018, and the pandemic outbreak of Covid-19 have led to more confusion and uncertainty among investors. One of the effective approaches to examine such unstable conditions is to study the co-movement(s) between markets to identify the leading variable(s). Thus, in the present study, Wavelet Coherence Analysis was applied to examine the co-movements between markets in a time period from September 2014 to June 2020, as an intense period of uncertainty in Iran. In other words, in this study, the markets were investigated in different sub-periods. Also, the Segmented Regression was performed to estimate the impact of sanctions and the Covid-19 pandemic on the co-movements of financial markets in Iran.The results showed that the oil price had a low co-movement with the other three markets, i.e. stock exchange, exchange rate, and gold markets. Thus, the oil market can be a suitable alternative for risk aversion investors. Meanwhile, the oil market could also act as a source of finance for the government during the sanctions period. That possibly explains the recent decision by the Iranian government to use the oil market to finance its budget deficit. Between the exchange rate and gold price, the gold price was identified as the leading variable. While the exchange rate and gold price did not show a significant co-movement in stable conditions, they did show a significant co-movement in unstable conditions, as in times of sanctions or during a global pandemic and thus influenced the investors’ portfolio risk. This result is important from a policy-making perspective. Based on this result, the policymakers can, especially during crises and unstable conditions, control the gold market and make it more stable by managing the foreign exchange market.     

Reforming the European Common Agricultural Policy: From price & income support to risk management

Over the last 30 years, the European Union has significantly reformed its Common Agricultural Policy by introducing direct payments to farmers and reducing price support levels. While the European agricultural prices become more volatile, all economic models assessing these reforms remain static and ignore the risk dimensions. This paper develops an original stochastic computable general equilibrium model capturing the different sources of risk, farmers’ risk attitude and risk contingent markets. We find that the reduction of price support levels has modest market impacts but negative global welfare effects by exposing risk-averse European farmers to the world price volatility. This issue is not solved by the direct payments, which have negligible market and global welfare impacts through their wealth effects. On the other hand, we find that unbiased futures markets can solve this global welfare issue by allowing European farmers to transfer their price risks. Therefore, European policymakers should ensure well-functioning risk contingent markets rather than maintaining rigid intervention price levels.     

Ambiguity in asset pricing and portfolio choice: a review of the literature

We survey the literature that has explored the implications of decision-making under ambiguity for financial market outcomes, such as portfolio choice and equilibrium asset prices. This ambiguity literature has led to a number of significant advances in our ability to rationalize empirical features of asset returns and portfolio decisions, such as the failure of the two-fund separation theorem in portfolio decisions, the modest exposure to risky securities observed for a majority of investors, the home equity preference in international portfolio diversification, the excess volatility of asset returns, the equity premium and the risk-free rate puzzles, and the occurrence of trading break-downs.     

Modeling oil price fluctuations and international stockpile coordination

Major interruptions in the supply of crude oil in the Middlle East have caused significant economic damage in terms of lost output and incresed inflation in the industrial countries. To the extent that the macroeconomic costs of shocks are a function of the magnitude of the oil price increases, domestic or internationally coordinated policies to restrain oil price increases during disruptions can be beneficial. One such policy initiative is the release of oil held in public stockpiles. We address the motivations for private and public stockpilling in an intertemporal optimizing model. As a special case of our general model, we develop and simulate a model of the world oil market to examine the benefits (in terms of lower world oil prices) of releasing oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.     

And yet they Co-move! Public capital and productivity in OECD

In this paper, we add to the debate on the public capital–productivity link by applying very recent developments in the panel time series literature that take into account cross sectional correlation in non-stationary panels. In particular, we evaluate the productive effect of public capital by estimating various production functions on a panel of 21 OECD countries over the period 1975–2002. Our results suggest that public capital has a positive long run impact on output, with elasticities that range between 0.05 and 0.15, depending on model specification. These findings are robust to the existence of spillover effects from public capital investments in other countries and to the inclusion of other productivity determinants, like human capital, the stock of patents and R&D capital. Finally, we do not find any important effect of public capital on GDP in the short run: this suggests that public infrastructure investments might not be a powerful countercyclical policy instrument.     

Remittance volatility and financial sector development in sub-Saharan African countries

In this study we examine the relationship between remittances, remittance volatility and financial sector development in sub-Saharan Africa using a two-step system GMM estimator over the period 2002–2014. Separately focussing on banking sector- and stock market development, our study distinguishes between the effect of remittances and remittance volatility on financial sector depth and financial sector efficiency. The results indicate remittances act as a substitute for the formal banking system in sub-Saharan African countries. We further provide evidence that remittance volatility is detrimental to both banking sector depth and efficiency. No evidence is found that remittance volatility is related to stock market development. A policy implication from our study is that sub-Saharan African countries should have measures in place to monitor the predictability of remittances while the cost of remittance transfer needs to be investigated.     

Does the Euro–Mediterranean Partnership contribute to regional integration?

The paper investigates whether Southern Mediterranean and Middle Eastern markets under the Euro–Mediterranean Partnership (Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Malta, and Turkey) have become more financially integrated with the European stock market over time. The findings suggest that the Turkish equity market is moderately integrated with the European market, while the other economies exhibit weak financial integration with Europe, supporting the idea that the partnership appears to have no effect on enhancing inter-market linkages for these economies. Therefore, these markets would be good destinations for international investors seeking attractive investment opportunities to diversify their equity portfolios. Structural changes in the cross-market integration do exist, which may be considered as a guide for international equity portfolio diversification over different subperiods. In addition, there is evidence of an increasing trend in conditional correlations for Egypt and Turkey, to varying degrees, over time, notably during the post global financial crisis of 2007–2008, thus revealing herding behavior during this period. Overall, investors should be wary of the variation of equity market integration over time before engaging in an investment at the level of portfolio management and diversification. Policymakers must be aware of the remoteness of the current achievements of the Euro–Mediterranean Partnership from the targets set in terms of financial development and economic growth.     

Prices in input-output: The INFORUM experience in modeling the U.S. deregulation of domestic oil

Prices, and particularly relative prices, have moved in recent years to the center of our attention. Soaring oil prices, large increases in agricultural prices, and rising costs of product materials and finished goods on world markets have set in motion major changes in the world economy. To model these changes, it has been necessary to use input-output analysis, for our input-output models have the necessary detail to trace these effects. This use of input-output may seem paradoxial to those who, for many years, dismissed this technique because it allegedly fails to take account of the effects of prices. The truth turns out to be almost the reverse: Only input-output can take full account of prices.This paper shows how prices work in the INFORUM model of the American economy. Specifically, it describes how the model generates prices, uses the prices in equations for personal consumption, and changes input-output coefficients on the basis of relative prices. Finally, it compares runs of the entire model to examine the effects in the U.S. of increasing domestic oil prices to world levels.     

Financial liberalization, exchange rates and stock prices: Exogenous shocks in four Latin America countries

This paper provides an analysis of the long-run relationships and short-run dynamics between stock prices and exchange rates as well as the channels through which exogenous shocks influence these markets. We use monthly data for the period January 1980 to February 2009 for four Latin America, namely, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico. We conduct our analysis by means of cointegration analysis and multivariate Granger causality tests. The main finding of our analysis suggests that stock and foreign exchange markets in these economies are positively related and that the U.S. stock market acts as a channel for these links. Moreover, it is shown that these links are independent of foreign exchange restrictions. Finally, stability tests proposed by Hansen and Johansen (1993) are applied and it is shown that the dimension of the cointegration space is sample independent while the estimated coefficients exhibit instability in recursive estimations. Instability in these long-run relationships is evident during the Mexican currency crisis of 1994-1995, the Asian crisis of 1997 and the 2007-2009 credit and financial crisis.     

Insuring September 11th: Market Recovery and Transparency

The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center caused unprecedented economic and structural ramifications in the insurance markets, resulting in considerable uncertainty and informational asymmetry. We test several theoretical models of how markets respond to and recover from extreme capital shocks. Using the capacity constraint, post-loss investment and implicit insurance contract models, we develop testable hypotheses predicting the temporal and cross sectional variation in insurance company stock prices following September 11th. We find evidence consistent with the models' predictions, in particular, the predictions regarding relations between net losses and leverage and stock price performance after the shock.     

Has Transport Infrastructure Promoted Regional Economic Growth？—— With an Analysis of the Spatial Spillover Effects of Transport Infrastructure

在综合考虑多维要素对中国区域经济增长的协同作用的基础上,构建交通基础设施对区域经济增长的空间溢出模型,利用1993．2009年的中国省级面板数据和空间计量经济学的研究方法,实证分析得出以下主要结论。（1）中国交通基础设施对区域经济增长的产出弹性值合计约0．05．0．07,表明其对中国区域经济增长具有重要的作用。（2）中国交通基础设施对区域经济增长的空间溢出效应非常显著,若不考虑空间溢出效应,会高估交通基础设施对区域经济增长的作用。（3）外地交通基础设施对本地经济增长表现为以正的空间溢出效应为主,但是也有空间负溢出的证据。（4）在影响区域经济增长的多维要素中,劳动力与其他公共部门资本存量对中国区域经济弹性的贡献仍然较大,新经济增长因素与新经济地理因素的作用也不容忽视。     

Performance of soccer on the stock market: Evidence from Turkey

This paper assesses the effect of soccer success on stock market returns for three major Turkish teams (Beşiktaş, Fenerbahçe and Galatasaray) after certain characteristics of the stock market are controlled for. The empirical evidence presented here suggests that Beşiktaş's win against foreign rivals in the Winner's Cup increases stock market returns. The same effect is not present for the other two big teams (Fenerbahçe and Galatasaray). The day of the week effect on the stock market and the relationship between risk and return are also presented.     

Inflation targeting and its spillover effects on financial stability in emerging market economies

In this paper, we study whether adoption of inflation targeting monetary policy framework has spillover effects on financial stability in emerging market economies. Working with data for 64 emerging market economies, we develop financial stability and sector specific stability indices and identify the effect using dynamic panel data models in difference-in-difference framework. We find significant positive spillover effects of inflation targeting adoption on banking system resilience and external capital inflows arising from improved transparency and accountability of the central banks. Based on the results, the paper recommends to emerging market economies which are currently under inflation targeting lite regime, to adopt full-fledged inflation targeting monetary policy.