An Examination of Component Returns and Volatility for Country-Specific Equity Funds in Emerging Markets: Evidence From Asian Financial Crisis

Abstract

This research aims to examine the daily return generating processes for country-specific funds in five east-Asian countries for the period 1995-2000. The effects of component returns and their volatility on the dollar denominated returns and volatility of U.S., international investors and the effects of exchange rate regimes on risk and return are also evaluated. The GARCH-M model is adopted, without the restrictive assumptions of linearity, independence, and constant conditional variance. The time frame, 1995-2000 captures a 30 months period prior to these East Asian countries aborting exchange rate stabilization/intermediate exchange rate regimes in response to the currency crisis. The decomposition of returns to holders of country-specific equity funds into the component returns due to changes in the exchange rate and the returns valued in the fund's foreign currency during a period of crisis provides additional information. This research provides evidence of the importance of examining component returns. With regards to the effects on volatility, both the conditional variances associated with the exchange rate returns and the returns denominated in the foreign currencies show some importance, especially the conditional variances associated with the returns denominated in the foreign currencies. With regards to the effects of return component, the exchange rate returns have a greater effect on the fund returns than foreign currency dominated returns.