This paper explores risk and return relations in six Asian equity markets affected by the 1997 Asian financial crisis. After the start of the crisis, national equity betas increased and average returns fell substantially. Beta increases due to leverage linked to exchange rates. The increase in expected return needed to accompany this rise in beta is made possible through the creation of capital losses that lower average returns. We propose a new probability-based asset pricing model that captures leverage effects using valuation ratios. Results show the role of leverage in explaining the likelihood of the financial crises. Crosssectional evidence supports time-series findings.

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) of 1999 marks the end of Depression era regulations like the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 and Bank Holding Company Act of 1956. These acts have restricted banks from securities and insurance underwriting business. This paper examines the impact of the GLBA on the banking industry. We find that the banking industry has a welfare gain from this law. We investigate two different categorizations of the banking industry. We find that Money Center banks followed by the Super Regional banks benefited most from this deregulation. On the other hand, banks that had Section 20 investment subsidiaries gained more than other banks in the second category. The results also show that the exposure to systematic risk for different categories of banks decreased after the passage of this law, which implies that the GLBA is fairly successful in containing the risk that accompanied the act and also created diversification opportunities. For Money Center banks, Super Regional Banks, banks with a section 20 subsidiary and banks with a new financial subsidiary, a shift in the exposure to systematic risk can explain the overall cross sectional variation in return from the deregulation. In both categorizations we find that larger banks gained more, while the overall explanatory power of profitability is not conclusive. Copyright Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 2005.

This paper examines the stability, predictability, volatility, time varying risk premiums and persistence of shocks to volatility in the ten Middle Eastern and African (ME&A) emerging stock markets. Although the majority of ME&A markets only recently gained emerging status, one finds that five out of the ten ME&A emerging markets have stable returns over time. On the issue of predictability in the ME&A emerging markets, three different tests have been employed to draw conclusions. It was found that by using the three different tests, one receives slightly different results on predictability. In general, one finds ME&A markets to be unpredictable. The findings on volatility in the emerging market indicate that eight out of the ten markets show evidence of volatility clustering, but in these eight ME&A markets the shocks are not explosive. On persistence of shocks to volatility, one finds only one market to have permanent shocks; and the volatility movement affects the stock market returns. In summary, eight emerging markets have volatility clustering and one market shows positive and significant time varying risk premiums. Overall, the results fail to indicate time varying risk premium in nine of the ten ME&A markets. Although many of the emerging markets in ME&A regions are in the formative stage, it is felt that ME&A equity markets are where investors may find a good return for the investment, considering the trade-off between risk and return. In particular, the correlation is found to be low, which provides investors with the opportunity for diversification.

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It is already well known that U.S. investors can achieve higher gains by investing directly in emerging markets (De Santis, 1997). Given the opportunity to invest directly in the shares of stocks in the developed (DCs) and emerging (EM) markets, it is interesting to know whether the U.S. investors can potentially gain any benefits by investing in ADRs. We test both index models, and SDF-based model.Our findings show that U.S. investors needed to invest in both ADRs and country portfolios in developed in the eighties, and in Latin American countries in early nineties. During the early and late nineties, we find substitutability between ADRs and country portfolios in DCs. As more and more ADRs are enlisted in the US market from developed countries over time, the ADRs become substitutes to country. Similarly, countries with higher number of ADRs irrespective of regions show the same pattern of substitutability between ADRs and country indices. However, such substitutability does not exist for countries with the highest number of ADRs by the end of sample period, 2001. On the other hand, U.S. investors can achieve the diversification benefits by investing ADRs along with U.S. market index in Asia. The significant marginal contribution of one-third of developed countries requires investment in ADRs and U.S. market in the developed countries. And investors do not need to hold both ADRs and country as it was the case in the eighties. On the other hand, investors need to hold both ADRs and country portfolios in most of the Asian countries to achieve diversification benefits at margin.