The Impact of the Financial and the Health Crisis on Listed Hotel Stocks

Travel and tourism represent one of the largest industries in the world as far as percentages of GDP and occupation are concerned, consequently, asset managers could be interested to select listed hotel stocks in their portfolios. The hotel industry has shown some difficulties not only in periods of financial, but also during the health crisis (Covid-19), when global and local restrictions on travel and tourism had a negative effect on the hotel sector. This study aims to analyze how listed hotel stocks could improve their contribution to portfolio diversification in different stages of the market. First, we use a constraint mean-variance approach to analyze the effect of diversification, and then we study the difference in the performance of the hotel sector by using the Risk-Adjusted Performance (RAP) measure. We analyze three sample periods: a) the whole sample (01/2000-09/2021); b) the Financial Crisis sample (06/2007-06/2012) and c) the COVID sample (02/2021-09/2021). Our findings contribute to a good understanding of financial patterns in the hotel industry as an asset class at different stages and support our hypothesis of its possible positive contribution in terms of diversification and performanc

European environmental policy and climate benchmarks: What happens to my money?

Climate change raised the interest in how the regulatory policy affects investor portfolios. The aim of this study is to analyze whether a new policy framework, that is the new European Climate Benchmark, negatively impacts the risk-return performance when investments are directed into stocks with specific emission-oriented criteria. By using a dataset of company Emission Score and recursive portfolio methodology, this article analyses the performance of High and Low Emission Stocks in European region. The study focuses on stocks listed on the Eurostoxx600 Benchmark, during the period 2006-2020. By implementing a variety of portfolio screens, our analysis provides the following insights. First, active selection of high-rated stocks does not provide inferior performance in comparison to low-rated stocks. Second, investors preferring stocks with low carbon footprints (good portfolio) and high carbon footprints (bad portfolio) still observe a performance similar to the broad market in terms of overall riskiness, while showing a U-shaped relationship between riskiness and Emission level. Moreover, investing in best Emission score stocks led investors to greater overall returns in the most turmoil periods, providing the insurance-like protection attribute associated with ethical investments. Therefore, there is no incompatibility between pursuing higher sustainable values as well as greater financial performances from investments

Volatility and liquidity in Eastern Europe financial markets under efficiency and transparency conditions

ABSTRACT. Following the consequences of the global financial crises, transparency and efficiency conditions of a local economic system have become important remedies for restoring of financial markets. This study provides measure of transparency and efficiency with correlation to liquidity and volatility and is taking into account the stock price reaction of emerging financial stock markets of Eastern Europe area and Turkey. We find that observed countries don't fully answer the expected sign of transparency, liquidity and risk measure, which meets the innovation from previous works (Berglof, Pajuste, 2005). It raises doubts concerning functioning of legal basement in these countries and affects the decisions about investments. In line with previous research (Ivanov, Lomev and Bogdanova, 2012) our findings show that these countries don't prove to have certain transparency expectations, which could result in a limited access to market information and in a decrease of market efficiency.Keywords: Financial Crisis, Risk, Liquidity, Volatility, Emerging Market, Eastern Europe.JEL Classification : G010, G23, G24(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)IntroductionCountries with emerging markets are trying to rebuild their economies according to developed market models and are becoming more attractive for investing and trading. According to Miyajima and Shim (2014) the total amount of Asset Under Management (AUM) by the largest 500 AMCs doubled from $35 trillion in 2002 to almost$70 trillion in 2012, more specifically, after Leham Brothers, the total AUM of EME equity and bond dedicated funds increased from $900 billion in October 2007 to$1.4 trillion in May 2014. However, emerging markets of Eastern Europe experienced influences of financial crises dramatically. Injured by consequences of financial crises then others. According to ECB (2010) in Europe, the impact of the crisis varied across the countries (also varied the speed and the timing at which countries were affected) and coming from domestic demand, dependence from FDI, fiscal policy and external imbalances. Among the Eastern Europe countries, Poland has weathered the crisis relatively well, unlike the Baltic countries, Romania and Bulgaria.When talking about the GDP growth (annual %), all observed countries showed a sharp reduction of this index in 2009, especially Ukraine, Turkey, Romania and Lithuania. In the end of the second wave of financial crises (2012), such countries like Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania demonstrated the highest GDP growth among the observed group. However, there are negative meanings of GDP growth in Czech Republic and Hungary, while other countries reduced their GDP down to the minimum but still positive meaning. Moreover, it led to a limited role of local firms in the efficient resource allocation in these countries. It is worth of saying that Eastern European emerging markets are very young and weak, hence, they are still trying to reach a decent level of efficiency, which is a key factor for investor's decisions. Eastern European markets are well-known for their lack of transparency and high level of corruption. However, exactly better transparency increases investor's desire to work with a certain country.According to recent studies (Barth (2013), Francis and Huang (2009), Lang (2012), Jahanshad (2013)), transparency is meant to improve liquidity which in turn is crucial to deal with large quantities of securities very fast and with minimum costs. Moreover, timing of liquidity of Eastern European markets is very important due to possible illiquidity of stocks where they can become expensive to sell at the exact time suitable for investor. Liquidity uncertainty reflects in liquidity volatility, liquidity skewness, and extreme liquidity events which bring a negative image of a company and it reflects also on the whole local financial markets (Barth (2013), Lang (2011), Lang (2012)).We agree with previous studies (Ang, Ciccone (2000), Lin (2014), Millar (2005)), that transparency is a timely and reliable increase of certain information which is open for investors.

Stock market reaction to policy interventions

We analyse stock price reactions to the announcements of monetary and fiscal policy actions in 12 stock exchanges worldwide between 1 June 2007 and 30 June 2012. While past papers have analysed the effect of policy interventions focusing on monetary policy actions (e.g. Ricci 2015), our paper focuses on stock indices either capturing the whole stock market or various industries. By estimating abnormal stock reactions around the announcement date, we show that (1) stock industry indices react to policy interventions in a different manner than the broad stock index does; (2) stock returns react negatively to restriction measures for general and non-banking sector indices; and (3) stock reaction to expansionary measures was stronger at the beginning of the financial crisis

Climate change shocks and socially responsible investments

Climate change's impact on investor behavior is a scantly investigated area in finance. This paper examines the performance of socially responsible exchange trade funds (ETFs) concerning conventional ETFs, in response to climate change events. We proxy climate change signals with a list of natural disaster events that NASA scientists relate to climate change. We contribute to existing literature, by using a very extensive information set of ETF strategies, not influenced by rating agencies' subjective evaluation policies, and covering almost 90% of the universe of worldwide sustainability thematic-oriented ETFs. This sample allows us to identify the socially responsible investment behavior in response to unpredictable climate change shocks. Our identification strategy accounts for endogeneity concerns and relies on two-stage least square (2SLS) approach finding that responsible investors react to climate change events by purchasing socially responsible investments. The relationship between climate change signals and return of investment in themes linked to the development of sustainability is positive. Interestingly enough, the sign of this relationship is different, when we disentangle the empirical results according to the asset type, confirming that investors shift their investments from equity funds to bond funds when market sentiment worsens. Our results indicate that policymakers should increase the support of firms adopting environmentally conscious business practices, while managers should boost a sustainable business strategy