Emerging stock markets have been identified as being at least partially segmented from global capital markets. As a consequence, it has been argued that local risk factors rather than world risk factors are the primary source of equity return variation in these markets. This paper seeks to address the question of whether macroeconomic variables may proxy for local risk sources. We find moderate evidence to support this hypothesis. Further, we investigate the degree of commonality in exposures across emerging stock market returns using a principal components approach. We find little evidence of commonalit y when emerging markets are considered collectively, however at the regional level considerable commonality is found to exist.

There is substantial argument that political risk is an important and increasing influence on international portfolio allocation decisions. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relation between political risk and stock returns within the context of emerging markets. The issue is examined using a framework that controls for global and other local return influences. Consistent with the paper's predictions, the findings reveals that political risk is more important in explaining return variation in emerging markets, particularly in the Pacific-Basin, than in a comparative sample of developed markets. At an aggregate level, supportive evidence is found of a positive relation between political risk and ex-post returns in emerging markets that is robust to alternative risk measures, and more prevalent during the 1990s.

No abstract

The working paper series is for manuscripts in draft form. Comments are welcome and should be sent to the contact author. Please do not quote without permission.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of sovereign rating changes on international financial markets using a comprehensive database of 42 countries, covering the major regions in the world over the period 1995-2003. In general, we find that rating agencies provide stock and foreign exchange markets with new tradable information. Specifically, rating upgrades (downgrades) significantly increased (decreased) USD denominated stock market returns and decreased (increased) volatility. Whereas the mean response is contributed evenly by the local currency stock returns and exchange rate changes that make up the USD returns, only the foreign exchange volatility was behind the USD denominated return volatility. In addition, we find significant asymmetric effects of rating announcements. The market responses-both return and volatility-are more pronounced in the cases of downgrades, foreign currency debt, emerging market debt, and during crisis periods. This study has important policy implications for international investors' asset allocation plans and for regulatory bodies such as the Basel Committee who increasingly rely upon Moody's, Standard and Poor's and Fitch's ratings for their regulatory regimes.