Economic forces and the stock market: An international perspective

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/27724/1/0000114.pd

Testing the CAPM with Time-Varying Risks and Returns.

This paper draws on Robert F. Engle's autoregressive conditionally heteroskedastic modeling strategy to formulate a conditional capital asset pricing model with time-varying risk and expected returns. The model is estimated by generalized method of moments. A capital asset pricing model that allows mean excess returns to shift in January survives generalized method of moments specification tests for a number of omitted variables. However, a residual dividend yield component is found to remain in the excess returns of smaller firms. The authors find significant monthly and quarterly components in the risk premia and beta estimates. Copyright 1991 by American Finance Association.

Closed-End Country Funds and U.S. Market Sentiment.

Closed-end country funds can trade at large premiums and discounts from their foreign asset vales (NAVs). Investigating this anomaly, we find that individual fund premiums move together, primarily because of the comovement of their stock prices with the U.S. market. Moreover, an index of country fund premiums differentiates size-ranked U.S. portfolio returns and forecasts country fund stock returns. These findings suggest that international equity prices are affected by local risk. In particular, we show that country fund premium movements reflect a U.S specific risk, which may be interpreted as U.S. market sentiment. Article published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Financial Studies in its journal, The Review of Financial Studies.