Stock Market Reaction to Catastrophic Shock: Evidence from Listed Pakistani Firms

This study examines the effect of the earthquake of October 8, 2005 on the price behaviour and activities of KSE. Sixty firms are selected from those listed on Karachi Stock Exchange, and the results are informative about the price behaviour of the stock market in response to unanticipated shock. The results reveal the fact that the earthquake had both a positive and a negative information content for KSE stocks. There is an increase in the return and volume of the cement, steel, food, and banking sectors, which indicates that investors have expectations of the upcoming demand of investment in these sectors. Furthermore, there is no significant increase in the volatility, because the investors seem certain about the future outlook and they take into account the March 2005 market crash. These findings support the fact that the stock market of Pakistan is reactive to unanticipated shocks and it takes no time to impact the market activities. The evidence also suggests that the Pakistani stock market is resilient, and that it recovered soon after the catastrophic shock.Catastrophic Shock, Market Model, GARCH Specification, Average Return, Market Volume, Market Volatility

Stock Market Reaction to Catastrophic Shock : Evidence from Listed Pakistani Firms

This study examines the effect of the earthquake of October 8, 2005 on the price behaviour and activities of KSE. Sixty firms are selected from those listed on Karachi Stock Exchange, and the results are informative about the price behaviour of the stock market in response to unanticipated shock. The results reveal the fact that the earthquake had both a positive and a negative information content for KSE stocks. There is an increase in the return and volume of the cement, steel, food, and banking sectors, which indicates that investors have expectations of the upcoming demand of investment in these sectors. Furthermore, there is no significant increase in the volatility, because the investors seem certain about the future outlook and they take into account the March 2005 market crash. These findings support the fact that the stock market of Pakistan is reactive to unanticipated shocks and it takes no time to impact the market activities. The evidence also suggests that the Pakistani stock market is resilient, and that it recovered soon after the catastrophic shock.Catastrophic Shock, Market Model, GARCH Specification, Average Return, Market Volume, Market Volatility

Fiscal Policy and Current Account Dynamics in Case of Pakistan

The study empirically investigates the effects of fiscal policy or government budget deficit shocks on the current account and the other macroeconomic variable: real output, real interest rate and exchange rate for Pakistan over the period 1960-2009. The structural Vector Autoregressive model is employed; the exogenous fiscal policy shocks are identified after controlling the business cycle effects on fiscal balances. The results suggest that an expansionary fiscal policy shock improves the current account and depreciates the exchange rate. The rise in private saving and the fall in investment contribute to the current account improvement while the exchange rate depreciation. The twin divergence of fiscal deficit and current account deficit is also explained by the output shock which seems to drive the current account movements and its comovements with the fiscal balance.Restricted Vector Autoregressive model, current account, government budget deficit, fiscal policy, exchange rate

Corporate Governance in Pakistan : Corporate Valuation, Ownership and Financing

In this study the relationship between corporate governance and corporate valuation, ownership structure and need of external financing for the Karachi Stock Market is examined for the period 2003 to 2008. To measure the firm- level governance a rating system is used to evaluate the stringency of a set of governance practices and cover various governance categories : such as board composition, ownership and shareholdings and transparency, disclosure and auditing. The sample consists of 60 non-financial firms listed on Karachi Stock Exchange and comprises more than 80 percent of market capitalization at Karachi Stock Market in 2007. The results confirms the theoretical notion that firms with better investment opportunities and larger in size adopt better corporate governance practice. The proposition that ownership concentration is a response to poor legal protection is also validated by the results. The more investment opportunities lead to more concentration of ownership and the ownership concentration is significantly diluted as the firm size expands. The findings are consistent with theoretical argument claiming that family owners, foreign owners and bring better governance and monitoring practices which is consistent with agency theory. The results suggest that firms which need more equity financing practice good governance. The results show that firms with high growth and large in size are in more need of external finance. The relationship between external financing and ownership concentration is negative. The results reveal that the firms which practice good governance, with concentrated ownership, need more external finance which have more profitable investment opportunities and are larger in size are valued higher. The interaction term of any variable with law enforcement term are not significant in any model suggesting that firm performance is not affected by rule of law in countries where legal environment is weak. These results adds an important link to the explanation of the consequences weak legal environment for external financing, corporate valuation and corporate governance. The results show that Corporate Governance Code 2002 potentially improves the governance and decision making process of firms listed at KSE.Ownership Concentration, Corporate governance, firm performance, External Financing, panel data

The Conditional Capital Asset Pricing Model: Evidence from Karachi Stock Exchange

This is an attempt to empirically investigate the risk and return relationship of individual stocks traded at Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE), the main equity market in Pakistan. The analysis is based on daily as well as monthly data of 49 companies and KSE 100 index is used as market factor covering the period from July 1993 to December 2004. The natural startingpoint of this study is to test the adequacy of the standard Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) of Sharpe (1964) and Lintner (1965). The empirical findings do not support the standard CAPM model as a model to explain assets pricing in Pakistani equity market. The critical condition of CAPM—that there is a positive trade-off between risk and return—is rejected and residual risk plays some role in pricing risky assets. This allows for the return distribution to vary over time. The empirical results of the conditional CAPM, with time variation in market risk and risk premium, are more supported by the KSE data, where lagged macroeconomic variables, mostly containing business cycle information, are used for conditioning information. The information set includes the first lag of the following business cycle variables: market return, call money rate, term structure, inflation rate, foreign exchange rate, growth in industrial production, growth in real consumption, and growth in oil prices. In a nutshell, the results confirm the hypothesis that risk premium is time-varying type in Pakistani stock market and it strengthens the notion that rational asset pricing is working, although inefficiencies are also present in unconditional and conditional settings. The observation is that the dynamic size and book-to-market value coefficient explain the cross-section of expected returns in a few sub-periods. The conditional approach to testing the CAPM and the three-factor CAPM shows that the asset prices relationship is better explained by accommodating business cycle variables as information set. The findings of the conditional three-factor CAPM also give support to the fact that time-varying firm attributes have only a limited role in Pakistani market to explain the asset price behaviour.Capital Asset Pricing Model, Fama-French Three Factor Model, Market Risk, Residual Risk, Size, Book-to-market Value, Information Set, Business Cycle Variables

Ownership Concentration, Corporate Governance and Firm Performance: Evidence from Pakistan

The study investigates the determinants of ownership concentration, the effect of ownership concentration on the firm’s performance with the sample of sixty representativ e firms from different manufacturing sectors of the Pakistan’s economy during 2003 to 2008. The results suggest that firms where ownership is concentrated they do not adopt better governance practices and disclose less, however board composition has posit ive and significant role. The firm specific factors affect the concentration of ownership more, the more investment opportunities provides greater incentives for ownership concentration, however, size has opposite effect and leads to diverse ownership to get wider access to funds and share ownership. The results reveal that in Pakistan corporations have more concentration of ownership which is the response of weak legal environment. The concentration of ownership by top five block-holders seems to have positive effect on firms’ profitability and performance measures. The family, foreign and director ownership also has positive affect on firm performance, however firm performance is not effected by financial institutions’ ownership. The broad implication that emerges from this study is that ownership concentration is an endogenous response of poor legal protection of the investors and seems to have significant effect on firm performance. It requires implementation of corporate governance reforms at most at par with real sector and financial sector reforms.Ownership Concentration, Corporate Governance, Firm Performance, Panel Data

Corporate Governance in Pakistan: Corporate Valuation, Ownership and Financing

In this study the relationship between corporate governance and corporate valuation, ownership structure and need of external financing for the Karachi Stock Market is examined for the period 2003 to 2008. To measure the firmlevel governance a rating system is used to evaluate the stringency of a set of governance practices and cover various governance categories: such as board composition, ownership and shareholdings and transparency, disclosure and auditing. The sample consists of 60 non-financial firms listed on Karachi Stock Exchange and comprises more than 80 percent of market capitalization at Karachi Stock Market in 2007. The results confirms the theoretical notion that firms with better investment opportunities and larger in size adopt better corporate governance practice. The proposition that ownership concentration is a response to poor legal protection is also validated by the results. The more investment opportunities lead to more concentration of ownership and the ownership concentration is significantly diluted as the firm size expands. The findings are consistent with theoretical argument claiming that family owners, foreign owners and bring better governance and monitoring practices which is consistent with agency theory. The results suggest that firms which need more equity financing practice good governance. The results show that firms with high growth and large in size are in more need of external finance. The relationship between external financing and ownership concentration is negative. The results reveal that the firms which practice good governance, with concentrated ownership, need more external finance which have more profitable investment opportunities and are larger in size are valued higher. The interaction term of any variable with law enforcement term are not significant in any model suggesting that firm performance is not affected by rule of law in countries where legal environment is weak. These results adds an important link to the explanation of the consequences weak legal environment for external financing, corporate valuation and corporate governance. The results show that Corporate Governance Code 2002 potentially improves the governance and decision making process of firms listed at KSE.Ownership Concentration, Corporate Governance, Firm Performance, External Financing, Panel Data

Test of Multi-moment Capital Asset Pricing Model: Evidence from Karachi Stock Exchange

This study examines the Capital Asset Pricing Model of Sharpe (1964) Lintner (1965) and Black (1972) as the benchmark model in the asset pricing theory. The empirical findings indicate that the Sharpe-Lintner-Black CAPM inadequately, particularly the explains Pakistan’s equity market economically and statistically significant role of market risk for the determination of expected returns. Instead of identifying more risk factors, a detailed analysis of a single risk factor is undertaken. We have concentrated on two main extensions of the standard CAPM model. First, the standard model is extended by taking higher moments into account. Second, the risk factors are allowed to vary over time in the autoregressive process. The result of unconditional non-linear generalisation of the standard model reveals that in the higher-moment CAPM model the investors are rewarded for co-skewness risk. However, the test provides marginal support for rewards of the co-kurtosis risk. Finally, the empirical usefulness of conditional higher moments in explaining the cross-section of asset return is investigated. The results indicate that the conditional co-skewness is an important determinant of asset pricing, and the asset pricing relationship varies through time. The conditional covariance and the conditional co-kurtosis explain the asset price relationship in a limited way. It is concluded that Kraus and Litzenberger (1976) attempts to develop a modified form of the Sharpe- Lintner-Black CAPM and is more successful with KSE data.Covariance, Co-skewness, Co-kurtosis, Non-normal Return Distribution, Capital Asset Pricing Model, Time-varying Moments.

Fiscal Policy and Current Account Dynamics in the Case of Pakistan

The relationship between fiscal policy and the current account has long attracted interest among academic economists and policymakers after introduction of the standard intertemporal model of the current account by Sachs (1981) and its extension by Obstfeld and Rogoff, (1995) in open economy macroeconomics. There are two major strands of the current account literature Mundell-Fleming [Mundell (1968) and Fleming (1967)] and Ricardian equivalence [Barro (1974, 1989)] to explain such variations in the deficits. According to Mundell-Fleming model budget deficits cause current account deficits through stimulating income growth or exchange rate appreciation [Darrat (1988); Abell (1990); Bachman (1992) and Bahmani-Oskooee (1992)]. On the other hand, there is Ricardian view that the financing of budget deficits, either through reduced taxes or by issuing bond does not alter present value wealth of private households since both temporarily reduced taxes and issuance of bonds represent future tax liabilities [Kaufmann, et al. (2002); Evans (1989); Miller and Russek (1989); Enders and Lee (1990) and Kim (1995)]. The underlying reason is that the effects of fiscal deficits on the current account depend on the nature of the fiscal imbalance. For example, in a simple theoretical model in which Ricardian equivalence holds, a cut in lump sum taxes and the ensuing fiscal deficit would not affect the current account as the private savings increase will offset the fiscal deficit but investment will be unchanged. Conversely, a transitory increase in government spending will increase both the fiscal deficit and the current account deficit, a case of twin deficits. And a permanent increase in government spending will have no effects on the current account while its effects on the fiscal balance will depend on whether the extra spending is financed right away with taxes (in which case the fiscal balance is unchanged) or whether it is financed with debt (future taxes) in which case the fiscal balance worsens. Thus, fiscal deficit may or may not lead to current account deficits depending on the nature and persistence of the fiscal shock. There is also a third scenario relate to Recardian view that portrays the possibility of negative relationship between the deficits where, for example, output shock give rise to endogenous movements and two deficits are divergent