https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w8245/w8245.pdf

Does Financial Liberalization Spur Growth

T he capital asset pricing model (CAPM) of William Sharpe (1964) and John Lintner (1965) marks the birth of asset pricing theory (resulting in a Nobel Prize for Sharpe in 1990). Four decades later, the CAPM is still widely used in applications, such as estimating the cost of capital for firms and evaluating the performance of managed portfolios. It is the centerpiece of MBA investment courses. Indeed, it is often the only asset pricing model taught in these courses. The attraction of the CAPM is that it offers powerful and intuitively pleasing predictions about how to measure risk and the relation between expected return and risk. Unfortunately, the empirical record of the model is poor—poor enough to invalidate the way it is used in applications. The CAPM’s empirical problems may reflect theoretical failings, the result of many simplifying assumptions. But they may also be caused by difficulties in implementing valid tests of the model. For example, the CAPM says that the risk of a stock should be measured relative to a comprehensive “market portfolio” that in principle can include not just traded financial assets, but also consumer durables, real estate and human capital. Even if we take a narrow view of the model and limit its purview to traded financial assets, is it

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The Capital Asset Pricing Model: Theory and Evidence

Diversified business groups, consisting of legally independent firms operating across diverse industries, are ubiquitous in emerging markets. Groups around the world share certain attributes but also vary substantially in structure, ownership, and other dimensions. This paper proposes a business group taxonomy, which is used to formulate hypotheses and present evidence about the reasons for the formation, prevalence, and evolution of groups in different environments. In interpreting the evidence, the authors pay particular attention to two aspects neglected in much of the literature: the circumstances under which groups emerge and the historical evidence on some of the questions addressed by recent studies. They argue that business groups are responses to different economic conditions and that, from a welfare standpoint, they can sometimes be "paragons" and, at other times, "parasites." The authors conclude with an agenda for future research.

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Business Groups in Emerging Markets: Paragons or Parasites?

https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/189496/1/dp13183.pdf

Inequality in the impact of the coronavirus shock: Evidence from real time surveys

This thesis investigates the relationship between economic growth and financial development in developing countries over 1988-2001. Previous studies have generally used averaged data, for both developing and developed countries, and inappropriate estimation methods. In an attempt to reach some definitive conclusions, Generalised Method of Moments dynamic estimation is used with a newly collected panel of annual data to assess the relationship. The results show that while banks performance has a negative impact on growth, stock markets positively promote growth. To reach an overall conclusion about the impact of finance on growth and to solve the problems associated with the existence of multicollinearity among the different measures of financial development, principal components analysis is used to generate new, comprehensive measures of financial development. In assessing the link between the new measures and financial development and growth, the results support the existence of an overall positive relationship. The thesis also examines the behaviour of interest rates in developing and industrialised countries using individual and panel unit root tests. The results are sensitive to the choice of the test, country and time unit.

Stock markets, banks and economic growth

When countries liberalize their stock markets, firms that become eligible for purchase by foreigners (investible), experience an average stock price revaluation of 10.4 percent. Since the covariance of the median investible firm's stock return with the local market is 30 times larger than its covariance with the world market, liberalization reduces the systematic risk associated with holding investible securities. Consistent with this fact: 1) the average effect of the reduction in systematic risk is 3.4 percentage points, or roughly one third of the total effect; and 2) variation in the firm-specific response is directly proportional to the firm-specific change in systematic risk. The statistical significance of this proportionality persists after controlling for changes in expected future profits and index inclusion criteria such as size and liquidity.

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Risk Sharing and Asset Prices: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

When countries liberalize their stock markets, firms that become eligible for foreign purchase (investible), experience an average stock price revaluation of 15.1%. Since the historical covariance of the average investible firm’s stock return with the local market is roughly 200 times larger than its historical covariance with the world market, liberalization reduces the systematic risk associated with holding investible securities. Consistent with this fact: (1) the average effect of the reduction in systematic risk is 6.8 percentage points, or roughly two fifths of the total revaluation; and (2) the firm-specific revaluations are directly proportional to the firm-specific changes in systematic risk. ASSET PRICING THEORY PREDICTS that capital will be allocated in such a way that risk-adjusted returns are equalized across assets. Levels of expected stock returns should vary cross-sectionally according to the degree of firm exposure to systematic risk (Sharpe (1964)). Research from the last several years provides little empirical evidence to support this prediction. Systematic risk factors show little indication that they are priced cross-sectionally, and many firm characteristics that are priced cross-sectionally do not resemble systematic risk (Fama (1991), Cochrane (1999), Campbell (2000)). This paper adopts a different approach to the question of whether risk matters for asset prices. Instead of testing the implication of the theory in levels, the paper focuses on changes in levels. It does so by examining a natural experiment—stock market liberalization. Stock market liberalization is a decision by a country’s government to allow foreigners to purchase shares in that country’s stock market. Liberalizing a country’s stock market changes the

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When a developed-country multinational firm acquires majority control of a firm in an emerging market, there is an economically large and statistically significant increase in the acquiring firm's stock price. In 1986--2006, developed-market acquirers experienced positive and significant abnormal returns of 1.16%, on average, over a three-day event window. Positive acquirer returns and dollar value gains appear unique to emerging-market mergers and acquisitions and are not replicated when the same developed-market acquirers take over firms in developed markets. The size of the stock price increase is more pronounced (a) the weaker the contracting environment in the emerging market and (b) for industries with high asset intangibility. The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org., Oxford University Press.

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The value of control in emerging markets

We show that unexpected changes in the trajectory of COVID-19 infections predict US stock returns, in real time. Parameter estimates indicate that an unanticipated doubling (halving) of projected infections forecasts next-day decreases (increases) in aggregate US market value of 4 to 11 percent, indicating that equity markets may begin to rebound even as infections continue to rise, if the trajectory of the disease becomes less severe than initially anticipated. Using the same variation in unanticipated projected cases, we find that COVID-19-related losses in market value at the firm level rise with capital intensity and leverage, and are deeper in industries more conducive to disease transmission. These relationships provide important insight into current record job losses. Measuring US states' drops in market value as the employment weighted average declines of the industries they produce, we find that states with milder drops in market value exhibit larger initial jobless claims per worker. This initially counter-intuitive result suggests that investors value the relative ease with which labor versus capital costs can be shed as revenues decline.

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Anusha Chari

Papers

Risk Sharing and Asset Prices: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Risk Sharing and Asset Prices: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

The value of control in emerging markets

Aggregate and Firm-Level Stock Returns During Pandemics, in Real Time

Incumbents and protectionism: The political economy of foreign entry liberalization