Stock Market Reactions to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership’s Approval: Evidence from Vietnam

Abstract

We examine the stock market performance of Vietnam’s listed firms in response to the country’s approval of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Employing an event study methodology, we first calculate the abnormal returns of all listed Vietnamese firms around the CPTPP’s approval date. Then, we attempt to link these abnormal returns to firms’ characteristics. We find evidence that the announcement of the CPTPP’s approval is associated with positive abnormal returns for Vietnam’s listed firms. We also find considerable heterogeneity in the magnitude and pace of the impacts of the CPTPP’s approval on market returns across Vietnam’s two stock exchanges. However, we fail to reject the null hypothesis that the market did not react to the CPTPP’s approval at the sectoral level.

Investor Responses Towards Corporate Action

“…If a company has an abnormal return, then this indicates that investors respond positively to the company's activities. There are several studies that used CAR as a measurement for investor responses [2]; [25]; [28]; [29]; [56]. Study from Ball and Brown [7] found that there is a significant relationship between announcement date and stock price changes.…”