The paper aims to investigate the interactions between rule of law, economic growth and the shadow economy in 18 selected transition economies. This study uses annual data over the period 2002-2015 for 18 transition countries to estimate the effects of rule of law and other factors on the size of shadow economy. The transition country group is classified based on International Monetary Fund resources and is selected on the basis of the availability of data. The data examined in this research are derived from the World Bank, Worldwide Governance Indicators project and Working Paper from International Monetary Fund. This study employs GMM method. The results show that the economic growth indicators have negative and statistically significant impact on the shadow economy. Additionally, these results also reveal that in transition countries the size of shadow economy is negatively related to the quality of rule of law. However, the findings of this research also point out that there are positive relationships between inflation, public expenditure and the size of shadow economy. Hence the results from this study suggest that the size of shadow economy could be controlled by improving the effectiveness of rule of law and the growth of economy particularly in transition countries.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to investigate the spillover effect of the US macroeconomic news on the first two moments of the Vietnamese stock market returns. Design/methodology/approach -The author collected market expectation and actual announcements data for 12 key US macroeconomic announcements for the period from August 2000 to September 2009 from Bloomberg. The dataset consists of monthly Non-farm payroll (NFPM), Unemployment level (UNEMP), Gross Domestic Product percentage level (GDP), Housing statistics (HOMEST), Industrial production (INDP), Leading Indicator (LEAD), Retail Sales (SALES), Consumer Price Index (CPI), Producer Index (PPI), Current Account (CA, quarterly), Trade Balance (BOT), and the Federal Reserve's target rates (FOMC, 8 times a year and ad hoc meetings if needed). The MA-EGARCH (1,1) model is used for the empirical test of the US macroeconomic news spillover effects on the VNI index. Findings -In general, the US real economic news has the strongest effect on the first two moments of the Vietnamese stock returns. This can be interpreted as evidence that Vietnamese market participants believe that the USA is targeting real economic activities other than other variables. It is also shown that even though the US stock market (proxied by S&P500 index) significantly affects the Vietnamese stock market returns, the spillover effect of the US macroeconomic news is still significant.Research limitations/implications -The author does not explore further on the transmission channels of the spillover effects of the US news on the Vietnamese stock market, reserving this task for future research. Originality/value -The paper contributes to the extant literature in several ways. First, to the author's knowledge, the current literature lacks empirical evidence for the impact of the US macroeconomic news on the first two moments of the Vietnamese stock markets. Given the growing integration between the two economies, evidenced by the fact that the USA is Vietnam's largest foreign direct investor and importer, the US macroeconomic news is very important, not only for Vietnamese policy makers but also for market participants. Furthermore, the choice of a small and open market with increasing exposure to the world economy and vulnerable to the US news (i.e. Vietnam) would help in reducing the problem of endogeneity bias in previous studies employing large economy pairs, as the US news might affect the Vietnamese stock market but not the reverse. Finally, previous studies tend to investigate the impact of macro news only on conditional returns. In this study, both conditional returns and the conditional variance of returns are modelled simultaneously in a time-varying framework (MA-GARCH) to better capture the impact of macroeconomic news on stock returns and stock market volatility.

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate the spillover effect of 14 US key macroeconomic news on the first two moments of 12 Asian stock market returns. Design/methodology/approach – The authors collect market expectation and actual scheduled announcements data for 14 key US's macroeconomic announcements from January 2002 to April 2012 from Bloomberg. The dataset consists of six groups: monetary policy and general macroeconomic indicators: the Federal Reserve's target interest rates (FOMC), gross domestic product (GDP), and leading indicator (LI); price indicators: consumer price index (CPI) and producer price index (PPI); business indicator: housing starts (HS) and industrial production (IP); consumption indicators: retail sales (RS) and consumer confidence level (CONSUM); labor market indicators: non-farm payroll (NFP), unemployment level (UE), and jobless claim (JOB); and external sector indicators: current account (CA) and trade balance (TB). The authors also collect daily opening and closing data of 12 Asian stock markets. Following Dow Jones classification, the authors divide them into two groups: five developed markets (Japan, Hong Kong, Republic of Korea, Singapore and Taiwan), and seven emerging markets (China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Thailand). The MA-EGARCH (1,1) model is used for the empirical test. Findings – First, the authors find that stronger than expected news from the USA is associated with higher conditional mean and lower conditional variance of the Asian stock market returns, in general. Second, the Asian stock markets tend to put more weight on information relating to the US labor market than the other news as this indicator reveals much information about the underlying health of the US economy since full employment is the most important mandate for the US administration and policy makers. Third, in responding to the US news, the Asian emerging markets seem to respond stronger to the US news than the Asian developed markets both in terms of the number of responses and the magnitude of the reaction. This suggests that this could be seen as evidence that emerging markets are more dependent on the information content of the US news than the developed markets. Fourth, the US news is absorbed gradually leading to persisting volatility responses in the Asian stock markets. Originality/value – The authors fill a gap in the extant literature in investigating the speeds of the news absorption across the Asia region by examining the spillover effects across three time horizons, namely daily, overnight and intraday.

This paper provides comprehensive evidence on the spillover effects of the U.S. Fed's and the European Central Bank (ECB)'s target interest rate news on the market returns and return volatilities of twelve stock markets in the Asia-Pacific over the period [1999][2000][2001][2002][2003][2004][2005][2006]. The news spillover effects on the returns are generally consistent with the literature where a majority of stock markets shows significant negative returns in response to unexpected rate rises. Whilst the results of the speed of adjustment for the Fed's news are mixed across the markets, the ECB news was absorbed slowly, in general. The return volatilities were higher in response to the interest rate news from both sources. In addition, both the Fed and the ECB news elicited tardy or persisting volatility responses. These findings have important implications for all levels of market participants in the Asia Pacific stock markets. JEL classification: E44; G14; G15Keywords: Target interest rate news; Spillover effects; U.S. Fed; ECB Acknowledgement: We would like to thank Stijn Claessens and an anonymous referee for valuable comments and suggestions that greatly enhanced this paper. The remaining errors, if any, are our own.

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