There is an ongoing debate over the role that equity markets play in determining and influencing international equity flows. The first chapter of this dissertation describes the large portfolio equity flows into China and India, in order to understand the buying behavior of US investors. The rapid growth of the Chinese and Indian economies, coupled with the recent development and liberalization of their financial markets has attracted significant portfolio investment from U.S. investors. It is commonly assumed that domestic investors have an informational advantage over foreign investors; however, some recent empirical literature has questioned this assumption. Essay one dissects the nature of the relationship between foreign equity flows, equity returns, and related variables. The results of my empirical investigation provides evidence that U.S. institutional investors are making investment decisions based on long-run determinants of value rather than responding to price signals or ‘chasing returns'. I anticipate that the strong relationship between equity flows and fundamentals will strengthen as information asymmetries decline and US investors continue to develop more sophisticated methods of assessing underlying value in China and India. The second essay of this dissertation explores a new panel data set based on US gross cross-border equity flows to 20 industrialized nations combined with measures of market valuation for the period of 1977-2005. Empirical evidence of imperfect integration across world equity markets indicates that valuation matters. Consistent with relative value trading as a determinant of equity flow patterns, I find that equity flows decrease sharply with host-country market valuations—in particular the component of valuation that is forecasted to revert the following year. I also find that equity flows increase sharply with US equity market valuations. These results suggest the existence of a valuation channel for cross-border equity flows. The findings of this chapter show that US investors are informed about both domestic markets and foreign markets. Peripheral findings of this essay confirm the findings of other researches, but with a longer sample period. Consistent with existing literature, I find a negative influence of interest rates spreads, and information asymmetries on cross-border trade in equities.

This dissertation addresses issues concerning liquidity and its volatility. It consists of two essays. The first essay, "Liquidity, Macro Factors and the U.S. Equity Flows to Emerging Markets", examines the role of liquidity on equity flows from the U.S. to fifteen emerging markets around the world. Since liquidity has many dimensions, an emphasis is placed on utilizing various measures of liquidity. Moreover, both static and dynamic analyses, as well as short and long-horizon regressions, are performed to investigate the research questions. The results suggest that a liquid market attracts flows, after controlling for market size, political openness, exchange rate and other macro factors. Additionally, evidence indicates that the importance of liquidity varies across regions. For instance in the Asian region, the relation between equity flows and volume-related liquidity is weak while that between flows and price impacts of trading is strong. Evidence also supports the relevance of macro factors such as a country's economic freedom. The second essay, "Liquidity Risk Premium Puzzle and Possible Explanations", attempts to resolve the liquidity risk puzzle: a negative relation between returns and liquidity risk, documented by Chordia, Subrahmanyam, and Anshuman (2001b), by employing alternative liquidity measures and by incorporating factors that might potentially affect the relation. The main findings are as follows. The relation between stock returns and volatility of liquidity depends on the measure of liquidity. When liquidity measures are based on trading volume, the results are largely mixed, but when liquidity is measured based on price impact of trading, the relation between returns and volatility of price impacts is positive, as expected. The results are sensitive to time periods examined. Moreover, during extreme down markets, the aversion to liquidity volatility is lower, suggesting behavioral bias might potentially address the puzzle. Empirical findings also suggest that liquidity risk premium tends to be greater for small stocks. Finally, when the VIX index is included as a proxy for investor sentiment, the results indicate that the relation between returns and liquidity risk is significantly positive in four out of five liquidity measures. In sum, the empirical analysis partially but not completely addresses the puzzle.