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This article shows that differentiating between good and bad inflation news is important to understanding how inflation affects stock market returns. Summing positive and negative inflation shocks as in previous studies tends to wash out or mute the effects of inflation news on stock returns. More specifically, we find that, depending on the economic state, positive and negative inflation shocks can produce a variety of stock market reactions. We conclude that the effect of inflation on stock returns is conditional on whether investors perceive inflation shocks as good or bad news in different economic states. (c) 2008 The Southern Finance Association and the Southwestern Finance Association.

This article proposes a dynamic vector GARCH model for the estimation of timevarying betas. The model allows the conditional variances and the conditional covariance between individual portfolio returns and market portfolio returns to respond asymmetrically to past innovations depending on their sign. Covariances tend to be higher during market declines. There is substantial time variation in betas but the evidence on beta asymmetry is mixed. Specifically, in 50% of the cases betas are higher during market declines and for the remaining 50% the opposite is true. A time series analysis of estimated time varying betas reveals that they follow stationary mean-reverting processes. The average degree of persistence is approximately four days. It is also found that the static market model overstates non-market or, unsystematic risk by more than 10%. On the basis of an array of diagnostics it is confirmed that the vector GARCH model provides a richer framework for the analysis of the dynamics of systematic risk.

This paper expands the recent empirical studies of international capital market integration in mainly three aspects. First, the study focuses on two Scandinavian markets, the Finnish and the Swedish, that are receiving more and more attention by international analysts in light of the ongoing European integration. For investors, these new markets offer interesting diversification opportunities. Secondly, the study covers a very long time span from January 1920 to December 1994. Thirdly, using a variety of approaches the paper clarifies previously published confusing results regarding the lead - lag structure between these markets. The results indicate that no evident cointegration or even fractional cointegration between the markets exist. An analysis of short-term dynamics indicates that virtually all shock impulses are absorbed in both markets within one month. Sub-period analyses reveal increasing instantaneous causality between the markets in the passage of time, whereas no meaningful Granger-causality is found.

This paper advocates two ways to make more efficient use of available information in reducing the bias of the risk premium estimate in two-pass tests of the CAPM. First, explicit modelling of the time-variability of betas can improve the accuracy of the beta forecasts. Second, the cross-sectional information available can be exploited more efficiently using individual stocks instead of portfolios provided that noisy beta predictions are given a smaller weight than more accurate ones. This paper proposes an adjustment of the cross-sectional regressions of excess returns against betas to give larger weights to more reliable beta forecasts. A significant positive relationship between returns and the beta forecast is obtained when the proposed approach is applied to data from the Helsinki Stock Exchange, while the traditional Fama-MacBeth approach as such finds no relationship at all.