Has the structural break slowed down growth rates of stock markets?

In this paper, we use the common structural break test suggested by Bai et al. (1998) to test for a common structural break in the stock prices of the US, the UK, and Japan. On the basis of the structural break, we divide each country‟s stock price series into sub-samples and investigate whether or not the structural break had slowed down the growth of stock markets. Our main findings are that when stock markets are modeled in a trivariate sense the common structural break turns out to be 1990:02, with the confidence interval including several episodes, such as the asset price bubble when housing prices and stock prices in Japan reached a peak in 1988/1989, the early 1990s recession in the UK, the business cycle peak of July 1990, the August 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the March 1991 business cycle trough. Annual average growth rates suggest that the structural break has slowed down the growth rate of the US, UK and Japanese stock markets.Common Structural Break Test, Stock Markets

The inflation-output nexus:empirical evidence from India, Brazil and South Africa

In this paper we study the relationship between output and inflation for India, Brazil, and South Africa using the EGARCH model. For India and South Africa, we find evidence for: (1) the Cukierman and Meltzer hypothesis that inflation volatility raises inflation; (2) the Friedman hypothesis that inflation raises inflation volatility; and (3) the Black hypothesis that output volatility raises output growth, and that output volatility reduces inflation. For Brazil, we do not find any evidence of a systematic relationship between inflation and output growth.Output, inflation, EGARCH model, volatility

Did the US macroeconomic conditions affect Asian stock markets?

The aim of this paper is to examine the impact of US macroeconomic conditions—namely, exchange rate and short-term interest rate—on the stocks of seven Asian countries (China,India, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and South Korea). Using daily data for the period 2000 to 2010, we divide the sample into pre-crisis period (pre-August 2007) and crisis period (post-August 2007) we find that in the short-run interest rate has a statistically insignificant effect on returns for all countries except the Philippines in the crisis period,while except for China, regardless of the crisis, depreciation had a statistically significant negative effect on returns. When the long-run relationship among the variables is considered,for four of the seven countries (India, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand) while there was cointegration in the pre-crisis period, in the crisis period there was no such relationship, implying that the financial crisis has actually weakened the link between stock prices and economic fundamentals.Interest Rate; Exchange Rate; Financial Crisis; Depreciation

The importance of real and nominal shocks on the UK housing market

The goal of this paper is to examine the responsiveness of the UK housing market to real and nominal shocks. To achieve this goal, we use a structural VAR model, based on quarterly data for the period 1957:1-2009:4. We find that in response to an interest rate shock, house prices (aggregate house price and modern house price) fall sharply over the first 4 years and do not recover to their pre-shock level. In response to a real GDP shock, both house prices react in a positive inverted U-shaped manner. Finally, we find that an inflation shock has a U-shaped negative impact on aggregate and modern house prices in the UK.real shock, nominal shock, UK housing market, VAR model

Has the Structural Break Slowed Down Growth Rates of Stock Markets?

In this paper, we use the common structural break test suggested by Bai et al. (1998) to test for a common structural break in the stock prices of the US, the UK, and Japan. On the basis of the structural break, we divide each countries stock price series into sub-samples and investigate whether or not the structural break had slowed down the growth of stock markets. Our main findings are that when stock markets are modeled in a trivariate sense the common structural break turns out to be 1990:02, with the confidence interval including several episodes, such as the asset price bubble when housing prices and stock prices in Japan reached a peak in 1988/1989, the early 1990s recession in the UK, the business cycle peak of July 1990, the August 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the March 1991 business cycle trough. Annual average growth rates suggest that the structural break has slowed down the growth rate of the UK and Japanese stock markets, while it has boosted the growth of the US stock market.Common Structural Break Test, Stock Markets

DOES DEMOCRACY FACILITATE ECONOMIC GROWTH OR DOES ECONOMIC GROWTH FACILITATE DEMOCRACY? AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

This paper examines the relationship between democracy and economic growth in 30 Sub-Saharan African countries. As our proxy for democracy we first use the democracy index constructed by Freedom House and then check the sensitivity of our findings using, as an alternative proxy for democracy, the Legislative Index of Electoral Competitiveness (LIEC). We find support for the Lipset hypothesis - in the long run, real GDP Granger causes democracy and an increase in GDP results in an improvement in democracy – in Botswana and Niger with both datasets, for Chad with the Freedom House data only and for Cote d’Ivoire and Gabon with the LIEC data only. Support for the compatibility hypothesis - in the long run democracy Granger causes real income and an increase in democracy has a positive effect on real income - is found for Botswana with the Freedom House data and for Madagascar, Rwanda, South Africa and Swaziland with the LIEC data. Support for the conflict hypothesis - in the long run democracy Granger causes real income and an increase in democracy has a negative effect on real income - is found for Gabon with the Freedom House data and Sierra Leone with the LIEC data.Causality, Democracy, Economic Growth, Sub-Saharan Africa.

Mean Reversion in Stock Prices: New Evidence from Panel Unit Root Tests for Seventeen European Countries

There is a large and growing literature that investigates evidence for mean reversion in stock prices. Empirically, there is no consensus as to whether stock prices are mean reverting or random walk processes at best, the results are mixed. In this paper, we provide further evidence on the mean reversion hypothesis for seventeen European countries using the Levin and Lin (1992), seemingly unrelated regression and the multivariate augmented Dickey-Fuller panel unit root tests. Our main finding is that stock prices of all seventeen European countries are characterised by a unit root, consistent with the efficient market hypothesis.

Investigating the Relationship between Health and Economic Growth: Empirical Evidence from a Panel of 5 Asian Countries

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between health and economic growth through including investment, exports, imports, and research and development (R&D), for 5 Asian countries using panel unit root, panel cointegration with structural breaks and panel long-run estimator for the period 1974-2007. We model this relationship within the production function framework, and unravel two important results. First, we find that in three variants of the growth model, variables share a long-run relationship; that is, they are cointegrated. Second, we find that in the long-run, while health, investment, exports, and R&D have contributed positively to economic growth, imports have had a statistically significant negative effect while education has had an insignificant effect. We draw important policy implications from these findings.Health; Economic Growth; Panel Unit Root; Panel Cointegration.

Dead Man Walking: An Empirical Reassessment of the Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment Using the Bounds Testing Approach to Cointegration

This paper empirically estimates a murder supply equation for the United States from 1965 to 2001 within a cointegration and error correction framework. Our findings suggest that any support for the deterrence hypothesis is sensitive to the inclusion of variables for the effect of guns and other crimes. In the long-run we find that real income and the conditional probability of receiving the death sentence are the main factors explaining variations in the homicide rate. In the short-run the aggravated assault rate and robbery rate are the most important determinants of the homicide raCapital Punishment, Deterrent Effect, Cointegration

Asymmetric Information and Market Collapse

In this paper, using data for the period January 1995 to May 2009 for the Shanghai stock exchange (SHSE), we show that aggregate illiquidity is a priced risk factor. We develop the relationship between the illiquidity factor, asymmetric information, and market collapse. Our empirical results show that while the illiquidity factor is a source of asymmetric information on the SHSE, asymmetric information does not trigger a market collapse.Illiquidity Factor; Asymmetric Information; Market Collapse.