Capital Account Liberalization, Risk Sharing and Asset Prices

Abstract

In the month that the capital account is liberalized, all publicly traded firms experience a 7 percent stock price revaluation. Firms whose shares become eligible for purchase by foreigners experience and additional revaluation that is directly proportional to their firm specific reduction in aggregate risk -- the covariance of the typical firm's stock return with the local market is on average 30 times larger than its covariance with the world market. The statistical significance of this proportionality persists after controlling for the firm-specific effects of liberalization on expected future profits in this sample of of 411 firms from 11 countries. These findings suggest that capital account liberalization facilitates risk sharing.