The spillover effects of target interest rate news from the U.S. Fed and the European Central Bank on the Asia-Pacific stock markets

This paper provides comprehensive evidence on the spillover effects of the U.S. Fed’s and the European Central Bank (ECB)’s target interest rate news on the market returns and return volatilities of 12 stock markets in the Asia-Pacific over the period 1999–2006. The news spillover effects on the returns are generally consistent with the literature where amajority of stock markets shows significant negative returns in response to unexpected rate rises. While the results of the speed of adjustment for the Fed’s news are mixed across the markets, the ECB news was absorbed slowly, in general. The return volatilities were higher in response to the interest rate news from both sources. In addition, both the Fed and the ECB news elicited tardy or persisting volatility responses. These findings have important implications for all levels of market participants in the Asia-Pacific stock markets.Target interest rate news; Spillover effects; U.S. Fed; ECB

Creditor Moral Hazard in Equity Markets: A Theoretical Framework and Evidence from Indonesia and Korea

This paper expands on the work of Sarno and Taylor (1999) and develops three alternative models in which creditor moral hazard might occur in equity markets under different assumptions regarding the existence of asset market bubbles and implicit guarantees. Incorporating IMF-related news associated with the own country and with other countries to our models, we are able to predict the expected change in investor behavior and its effect on stock returns. Using daily stock returns for Indonesia and Korea, we test the ability of the models to predict the expected changes in stock returns on the days of IMF-related news such as program negotiations and program approval. Our results regarding Korea and, to a lesser extent, Indonesia are consistent with the creditor moral hazard models that assume implicit guarantees and asset price bubbles. Our results show that, if there is creditor moral hazard in equity markets, its duration could be measured only by days, suggesting that creditor moral hazard is a short-term phenomenon.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40045/3/wp659.pd

Testing creditor moral hazard in sovereign bond markets: A unified theoretical approach and empirical evidence

This paper critically evaluates the existing empirical literature on creditor moral hazard in sovereign bond markets, proposes a unified theoretical approach to test for IMF-induced creditor moral hazard, and provides empirical evidence, using daily sovereign bond market spreads of Indonesia and Korea. The results suggest that IMF-related news regarding program negotiations and approval may be associated with creditor moral hazard, but their impact on spreads is short-lived, indicating that creditor moral hazard could be best described as a short-run phenomenon. --

Financial Sector Returns and Creditor Moral Hazard: Evidence from Indonesia, Korea, and Thailand

This paper introduces a framework of investor behavior in which investors form their expectations regarding the credibility of a prospective IMF program in reforming the financial sector characterized by domestic implicit guarantees. We examine the changes in financial sector returns in response to IMF-related news such as announcements of program negotiations and approval to infer investor perception regarding the Fund support associated with the program. We test the implications of our framework based on the East Asian crisis of the late 1990s. Using daily financial sector returns from Indonesia, Korea, and Thailand, we find that news of program negotiations and approval increases financial sector returns in Indonesia and Korea. The findings are consistent with investor perception that negotiated IMF programs are non-credible due to expected continuation of domestic implicit guarantees during the future FundMoral Hazard, the IMF, Asian crisis, Financial markets

Does the IMF cause moral hazard? A critical review of the evidence

The paper provides a critical review of empirical studies on IMF induced moral hazard. Taken together, there is considerable evidence that the insurance provided by the Fund leads to moral hazard with investors in bond markets, while moral hazard in equity markets has so far not been convincingly tested. Debtor moral hazard has much less frequently been investigated, and the counterfactual is more difficult to construct. There is, however, evidence that debtor governments’ policies are negatively influenced by the insurance. Their policies are more expansive leading to higher probabilities of IMF programs and shorter inter-program-periods.

Do changes in sovereign credit ratings contribute to financial contagion in emerging market crises?

Credit rating changes for long-term foreign currency debt may act as a wake-up call with upgrades and downgrades in one country affecting other financial markets within and across national borders. Such a potential (contagious) rating effect is likely to be stronger in emerging market economies, where institutional investors' problems of asymmetric information are more present. This empirical study complements earlier research by explicitly examining cross-security and cross-country contagious rating effects of credit rating agencies' sovereign risk assessments. In particular, the specific impact of sovereign rating changes during the financial turmoil in emerging markets in the latter half of the 1990s has been examined. The results indicate that sovereign rating changes in a ground-zero country have a (statistically) significant impact on the financial markets of other emerging market economies although the spillover effects tend to be regional

Impacts of the US and China Macroeconomic Indicator Announcements on Cambodia Stock Market

This study investigates the impacts of five macroeconomic indicator announcements from the Unit States and China on the volatility of Cambodia Securities Exchange (CSX) index during the period of 2016 to 2021. Generally, it is a well-known fact that a country’s macroeconomic announcement could potentially affect the stock return volatility of another; however, despite decades of research, new small emerging countries remain untouched, unexplored, and may contain new knowledge to learn from. To investigate this subject, E-GARCH model was used as a method to analyze the behavior of volatility of the index upon the releases of selected five unexpected macroeconomic indicator announcements by both the US and China. The findings suggest that CPI, GDP, IP, and BOT announcements released by the US were found to have the greatest influence on the volatility of Cambodia stock index. In comparison, the index reacted only to the announcements related to China’s IP, PMI, and BOT. The contrasting outcomes behavior could be explained by the two countries’ trading relationship with Cambodia, prior research, and issues surrounding the release of China’s macroeconomic announcement

The Impact of Monetary Policy on Financial Markets in Small Open Economies: More or Less Effective During the Global Financial Crisis?

This paper estimates the impact of monetary policy on exchange rates and stock markets for eight small open economies: Australia, Canada, the Republic of Korea, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. On average across these countries, a one percentage point surprise rise in official interest rates leads to a 1% appreciation of the exchange rate and a 1% fall in stock market indices. The effect on exchange rates is notably weaker in the non-Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries with a managed float. For the OECD countries, there is no robust evidence of a change in the effect of policy during the global financial crisis. For the non-OECD countries, there is some evidence of a stronger effect of policy on stock markets during the crisis, although further research is needed to investigate whether this is a result of measurement issues.Monetary policy effectiveness; exchange rate; stock prices; crisis; Asian economies

AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION OF THE BEHAVIOUR OF FOREIGN INVESTORS IN EMERGING MARKETS

Using monthly data of foreign flows on Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE), the thesis finds that in contrast to most of the available theory and repeated previous findings on other markets, foreign investors act in a contrarian manner with respect to past local returns in ISE, however only in rising markets. The findings do not support the price pressure hypothesis; instead the price impact is permanent supporting the base-broadening and information hypotheses. The analysis on individual stocks suggests no evidence of informed trading, suggesting that, foreigners have no particular advantage in terms of domestic information in the ISE. Employing daily trading data from five emerging stock markets, namely the Jakarta Stock Exchange, Korea Stock Exchange (KOSPI), Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET), Taiwan Stock Exchange, and the Kosdaq Stock Market, this thesis documents that that in four out of five markets global risk appetite affects equity flows to emerging markets. Furthermore, foreigners’ trading with respect to local return is found to be different across high and low risk appetite levels in Indonesia, Kosdaq and the Kospi markets. Their trading with respect to local return is also found to be different across high and low states of the economy in KOSPI and SET. Finally, using a daily dataset from the Stock Exchange of Thailand, this thesis investigates whether foreigners react differently on the announcement of macroeconomic news, compared to local investors. It also addresses some serious econometric issues that have affected other papers in this area. Under this improved model, many reactions turn out not to be significant, particularly since the 1997-8 crisis. However, on hearing inflation news, foreigners do react in the opposite way to local individual investors. They will therefore tend to reduce any locally-induced volatility

What moves the primary stock and bond markets? Influence of macroeconomic factors on bond and equity issues in Malaysia and Korea

This paper examines the impact of macroeconomic factors on the stock and bond market activities in two Asian countries. We examine the influence of interest rate changes, expected inflation rate, and stock market returns on aggregate stock and bond issuance in Malaysia and Korea. Using vector autoregressive models (VARs) and variance decomposition techniques, our result show that dynamics of equity and bond issuance in both countries vary significantly. Our findings show that there has been a two-way relationship between interest rate changes and bond issuance in the case of South Korea, whereas, stock returns have significantly influenced the bond issuance (instead of equity issuance) in Malaysia. The findings seem to support emerging popularity of corporate bond markets in Asian region.stock and bond markets, macroeconomic factors, VAR, Malaysia, South Korea