Exchange Rate Regimes, Globalisation, and the Cost of Capital in Emerging Markets

This paper presents a multifactor asset pricing model for currency, bond, and stock returns for ten emerging markets to investigate the effect of the exchange rate regime on the cost of capital and the integration of emerging financial markets. Since there is evidence that a fixed exchange rate regime reduces the currency risk premia demanded by foreign investors, the tentative conclusion is that a fixed exchange rate regime system can help reduce the cost of capital in emerging markets.Exchange rate regimes; Development economics

The effects of barriers on equity investment in developing countries

Equity flows to developing countries climbed to an estimated $13 billion in 1992, four times the amount invested three years earlier. Investment increased partly because countries removed restrictions on foreign ownership, liberalized capital account transactions, and generally made foreign access to their markets easier. The authors investigate how stock performance in emerging markets is affected by foreign investors'formal access to stocks (as measured by the International Finance Corporation's index of"investability"). To measure foreigners'access to emerging-market stocks, they use the investability index created by the IFC's Emerging Market Data Base. The IFC indexes should be a good indicator of changes in legal barriers over time or of the relative importance of those barriers across securities in one market at a given point in time, or across markets. Using the Stehle (1977) model, the authors reject the hypothesis that emerging markets are integrated with world capital markets (for most emerging markets). They fail to reject the hypothesis that emerging markets are segmented (for all emerging markets). The authors interpret this as legal and other barriers limiting foreign investors'access to emerging markets. They next investigate the relationship between stock performance and the investability index to determine the importance of legal barriers relative to other barriers. They find a strong relationship between a stock's price-earnings ratio and its investability index, which suggests that formal barriers to foreigners'access has a negative effect on stock prices and thus raises the cost of capital for firms listed. Countries could lower the (risk-adjusted) cost of capital, they contend, by removing legal barriers to foreign investors'access to equity markets.Markets and Market Access,Access to Markets,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism

Labor Share Fluctuations in Emerging Markets: The Role of the Cost of Borrowing

This paper contributes to the literature by documenting labor income share fluctuations in emerging economies and proposing an explanation for them. We show that emerging markets differ from developed markets in terms of changes in the labor share over the business cycle. Labor share is more volatile in emerging markets and is pro-cyclical with output, especially in countries facing counter-cyclical interest rates. On the contrary, labor share in developed markets is more stable and slightly counter-cyclical with output. A frictionless RBC model cannot account for these facts. We introduce working capital into an RBC model, which generates liquidity need for labor payments. The main result is that the behavior of the cost of borrowing along with working capital mechanisms can predict the right sign of the comovement between labor share and output, and can partly be responsible for the volatility of labor share. We also show that imperfect financial markets in the form of credit restrictions not only amplify the results for the variability of labor share but also help better explain some of the striking business cycle regularities in emerging markets such as strongly pro-cyclical investment and counter-cyclical net exports.labor income share, emerging markets, working capital, credit constraints

Testing Multi-Factor Asset Pricing Models in the Visegrad Countries

There is no consensus in the literature as to which model should be used to estimate stock returns and the cost of capital in the emerging markets. The Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), which is most often used for this purpose in the developed markets, has a poor empirical record and is likely not to hold in the less developed and less liquid emerging markets. Various factor models have been proposed to overcome the shortcomings of the CAPM. This paper examines both the CAPM and macroeconomic factor models in terms of their ability to explain average stock returns using data from the Visegrad countries. We find, as expected, that the CAPM is not able to do this task. However, factor models, including factors such as the excess market return, industrial production, inflation, money, the exchange rate, exports, the commodity index, and the term structure, can in fact explain part of the variance in the Visegrad countries’ stock returns.CAPM, macroeconomic factor models, asset pricing, cost of capital, Poland

Estimating the Cost of Equity in Emerging Markets: A Case Study

A firm\u27s weighted average cost of capital is an integral component in capital budgeting decisions and in assessment of the firm\u27s enterprise and equity value. Estimation of the cost of equity is a key component in determining the overall cost of capital. The calculation of the cost of equity for U.S. based corporations is relatively straightforward and is most often estimated as a function of the U.S. risk-free rate, the firm\u27s beta value, and an estimate of the average risk premium associated with equity investments compared to risk free assets. Since U.S. financial markets are fairly liquid and reasonably efficient, estimates of the required input variables are relatively reliable. In contrast, the estimation of equity capital costs for corporations based in emerging markets presents many challenges. Emerging markets are often characterized by additional risks including political risks and the risks associated with operating in markets that are less liquid and transparent than mature markets. This leads to issues in identifying appropriate and reliable measures of the risk free rate, beta and the equity risk premium. In this paper we describe five commonly used approaches to estimate the cost of equity for firms based in emerging markets and then apply these ..

Financial Integration Without the Volatility

Integration to international capital markets is one of the key pillars of development. However, capital flows also bring volatility to emerging markets. Are there mechanisms to reap the benefits of capital flows without being hurt by their volatility? Are current practices, such as large reserves accumulation, public deleveraging, and export promotion strategies, efficient external insurance mechanisms? In this pa- per we start by documenting the external volatility faced by emerging markets as well as current self-insurance practices, especially among prudent economies. We then provide a simple model that illustrates the inefficient nature of these practices. We argue that with the help of the IFIs in developing the right contingent markets, similar protection could be obtained at lower cost by using financial hedging strategies. We also argue that, at least for now, local governments have an important role to play in the implementation of these external insurance mechanisms.

The relationship between financial development and cost of equity capital in African emerging and frontier markets

Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Master of Management in the subject Finance and investments at the University of Witwatersrand 2017Although many studies have been done to determine the relationship between financial development and cost of equity capital in various markets, few have focused on the African emerging and frontier markets. This research therefore investigates the relationship between financial development and cost of equity capital in the African Emerging and Frontier Markets. Stock market development and banking sector development are both used as proxies for financial development in this study whilst cost of equity is determined using CAPM. The study is based on five emerging and frontier markets (Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria and South Africa). The research finds that both measures of stock market development (stock market capitalisation to GDP ratio and stock market liquidity/turnover to GDP ratio) tend to reduce cost of equity in the African emerging and frontier markets. In a similar fashion, the banking sector development was also found to be negatively related to cost of equityMT 201

The Dynamics of Emerging Market Equity Flows

We study the interrelationship between capital flows, returns, dividend yields and world interest rates in 20 emerging markets. We estimate a vector autoregressionn with these variables to measure the degree to which lower interest rates contribute to increased capital flows and shocks in flows affect the cost of capital among other dynamic relations. We precede the VAR analysis by a detailed examination of endogenous break points in capital flows and the other variables. These structural breaks are traced to the liberalization of emerging equity markets. Our evidence of structural breaks call into question past research which estimates VAR models over the full sample. After a liberalization, we find that equity flows increase by 1.4% of market capitalization. We also show that shocks in equity flows initially increase returns which is consistent with a price pressure hypothesis. While the effect is diminished over time, there also appears to be a permenant impact. This is consistent with our finding that our proxy for the cost of capital, dividend yields, decreases. Finally, our analysis of the transitition dynamics from pre-liberalization to post-liberalization suggests that when capital leaves, it leaves faster than it came in. These results may help us understand the dynamics of the recent crises in Latin America and East Asia.

Putting the Brakes on Sudden Stops: The Financial Frictions-Moral Hazard Tradeoff of Asset Price Guarantees

The hypothesis that Sudden Stops to capital inflows in emerging economies may be caused by global capital market frictions, such as collateral constraints and trading costs, suggests that Sudden Stops could be prevented by offering price guarantees on the emerging-markets asset class. Providing these guarantees is a risky endeavor, however, because they introduce a moral-hazard-like incentive similar to those that are also viewed as a cause of emerging markets crises. This paper studies this financial frictions-moral hazard tradeoff using an equilibrium asset-pricing model in which margin constraints, trading costs, and ex-ante price guarantees interact in the determination of asset prices and macroeconomic dynamics. In the absence of guarantees, margin calls and trading costs create distortions that produce Sudden Stops driven by occasionally binding credit constraints and Irving Fisher's debt-deflation mechanism. Price guarantees contain the asset deflation by creating another distortion that props up the foreign investors' demand for emerging markets assets. Quantitative simulation analysis shows the strong interaction of these two distortions in driving the dynamics of asset prices, consumption and the current account. Price guarantees are found to be effective for containing Sudden Stops but at the cost of introducing potentially large distortions that could lead to 'overvaluation' of emerging markets assets.

Estimating the country risk premium in emerging markets: the case of the Republic of Macedonia

Estimation of the cost of capital is difficult in developed markets and even more difficult in emerging markets. Investments in the emerging markets are more risky than in the developed markets but return is also higher. The key question here is whether the return on investments in emerging markets should be rewarded by compensation in excess of that provided by an equivalent investment in a developed market. Contemporary literature provides alternative ways for calculating the cost of capital invested in emerging markets. In general, it can be concluded that it is widely accepted that country risk matters when investing in emerging markets and it is a key component in the estimation of the cost of capital for those investments. Country risk is non-diversifiable, which will be argued in this paper first, after which an alternative approach will be provided for quantification of country risk in the risk premium measure, which is integral component in the models for estimating the cost of capital