Seasonality in the Australian Stock Market

This paper examines the presence of day-of-the-week and month-of-the-year effects in the Australian stock market over the past several decades, and investigates whether long-standing anomalies persist following the 1987 stock market crash, and the 2008 global financial crisis. We find that before the 1987 crash the Australian stock market recorded lowest returns on Tuesday and highest returns on Thursdays. However, these daily phenomena seemed to vanish in the decades since, suggesting that Australian daily share prices are more likely to move randomly. In contrast, monthly seasonality is still in place with negative returns recorded in May and June, and high returns in July, December, and April. Seasonality and predictability in Australian equity prices, though reduced, are thus seemingly not dead just yet

Regulatory regionalism and anti-money-laundering governance in Asia

With the intensification of the Financial Action Task Force's (FATF's) worldwide campaign to promote anti-money-laundering regulation since the late 1990s, all Asian states except North Korea have signed up to its rules and have established a regional institution—the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering—to promote and oversee the implementation of FATF's 40 Recommendations in the region. This article analyses the FATF regime, making two key claims. First, anti-money-laundering governance in Asia reflects a broader shift to regulatory regionalism, particularly in economic matters, in that its implementation and functioning depend upon the rescaling of ostensibly domestic agencies to function within a regional governance regime. Second, although this form of regulatory regionalism is established in order to bypass the perceived constraints of national sovereignty and political will, it nevertheless inevitably becomes entangled within the socio-political conflicts that shape the exercise of state power more broadly. Consequently, understanding the outcomes of regulatory regionalism involves identifying how these conflicts shape how far and in what manner global regulations are adopted and implemented within specific territories. This argument is demonstrated by a case study of Myanmar

Fiery Dragons? The Chettiars in Burma

1 page(s

Australia's "Employment Approach" to international postwar reconstruction: calling the bluff of multilateralism

15 page(s

Fiery dragons : banks, moneylenders and microfinance in Burma

This book tells the story of Burma’s financial system – of its banks, moneylenders and ‘microfinanciers’ – from colonial times to the present day. It argues that Burma’s financial system matters, and that the careful study of this system can tell us something about Burma – not least about how the richest country in Southeast Asia at the dawn of the twentieth century, became the poorest at the dawn of the twenty-first. While financial systems and institutions matter in all countries, the book argues that they especially count in Burma. Events in the financial and monetary sphere have been unusually, spectacularly, prominent in Burma’s turbulent modern history. From the Chettiars and the alienation of the land, to the backlash against the foreign moneylender. From the great state banks of the democracy years, to the Orwellian ‘people’s banks’ of the Burma way to socialism. From Burma’s bizarre demonetization experiences, to the rise and crash of the entrepreneurial bankers. And from the money launderers to the practitioners of microfinance. The story of Burma’s financial system and its players is one that has shaped the country. It is a dramatic story, and it is an important story

Recapitalizing Burma's rural credit system

21 page(s

Profiles of Burma's banks

Following the banking crisis of 2002/03, the already opaque world of Burma’s banks became even murkier. Determining the current state of play of this sector is, accordingly, extraordinarily difficult and more than usually dependent upon conjecture, rumours, and other imperfect substitutes for knowledge. In the following, we attempt to distil what we know about Burma’s banks into a series of sketches of each. We begin with an examination of the state-owned institutions that once more dominate, before investigating each of the surviving private banks that once seemed to have much promise. The information employed below comes from a great variety of sources, some of which can be (and are) openly acknowledged, but many of which have been entrusted to BEW on condition of confidentiality. We would like, nonetheless, to thank all of those who have helped us peer however imperfectly) into the dark corners of Burma’s banking sector.31 page(s

Behind the Teak Curtain: Authoritarianism, Agricultural Policies and Political Legitimacy in Rural Burma/Myanmar

2 page(s