Bakgrund: Offentlig information som finns tillgänglig visar att det är en stark majoritet män i bolagsstyrelser. I takt med att mångfald diskuteras i samhället och allt fler yrken blir mer jämställda, har styrelserummens könsdiversifiering inte omvandlats på samma sätt jämfört med andra yrken. Vissa skandinaviska länder har vidtagit åtgärder för att öka jämställdheten i företagens styrelser. Det kan berika att veta om de vidtagna åtgärderna ger det förväntade resultatet. Syfte: Syftet med studien är att undersöka om det finns något samband mellan avkastningen och könsfördelningen bland styrelseledamöterna i nyintroducerade bolag på Stockholmsbörsens, Large Cap, Mid Cap och Small Cap. Metod: Studien utgår från en kvantitativ metod med multipel regressionsanalys för olika oberoende variabler för att undersöka korrelationen mellan lönsamhet och könsdiversifiering inom bolagsstyrelser på kort sikt samt lång sikt. Därtill utfördes t-tester för att pröva om skillnader mellan genomsnittlig avkastning finns. Slutsats: Resultaten från denna studie finner inga evidens på statistiska samband mellan könsdiversifiering i styrelsen och lönsamhet i avkastning över durationen på ett år från att börsnotering skett. / Background: Public information that is available indicates that there is a strong majority of males ruling in the board rooms. As diversity is becoming widely debated in society and different occupations are becoming more gender equal, the boardrooms do not convert in the same past as other occupations. Some Scandinavian countries have gone to long measures to increase gender diversity in the corporate boardrooms. Furthermore, it can enrich to know if the measures taken give the anticipated outcome.  Purpose: The purpose of the study is to investigate whether there is any relationship between the profitability and the gender distribution among the board members of newly listed companies on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, Large Cap, Mid Cap and Small Cap. Methodology: The study approaches a quantitative method with multiple regressions analyses with separate control variables to examine the correlation between profitability and gender diversity in corporate boards on short-term and long-term. In addition, t-tests were performed to investigate differences between average returns. Conclusion: The results of this study indicate that there is no statistically determined relationship between the gender diversity of the board and the stock return over the duration of a year from going public.

This study evaluates the performance of Growth and Value Stock Investment Strategies and investigates the relative performance of these two types of stocks in Denmark and Finland. The research compares the historical returns and consequences of investing in value and growth stocks and examines the factors that drive their performance. The research questions focus on whether there is a significant difference in performance between value stocks portfolios and growth stocks portfolios. The study uses a deductive approach and a quantitative research design to analyze numerical data collected mainly from Thomson Reuters Eikon Datastream. Microsoft Excel and SPSS Statistics were the main tools used to form samples to process and analyze the data. The samples consist of listed stocks on the Danish and Finnish stock markets, and the portfolios are divided based on their Price-to-Book ratios and Price-To-Earnings ratios. The evaluated years are divided into four sub-periods to reflect different economic conditions. The findings suggest that there were significant differences in the performance of value and growth portfolios in the Finnish market during specific sub-periods, while in Denmark, there were no significant differences in returns between portfolios consisting of value stocks and portfolios consisting of growth stocks in all sub-periods, except for sub-period 3. The performance of the portfolios may be affected by factors such as interest rates, financial distress, and economic conditions in various sectors of the economy. The study's results can provide investors with insights into the relative performance of growth and value stocks and help them make informed decisions about stock allocation when forming portfolios, enhancing their investment strategies.

The purpose of this study is to identify what company specific parameters prior to an IPO have significant impact on share price performance one year after listing. This is done by analysing listings on the Stockholm Stock Exchange in the period 2014-2019.  The method which has been used is a multiple linear regression with adjusted share price as response variable and 7 specific company data points as independent variables. The share price development of companies is adjusted to the SIX Return Index and the 7 company variables cover size, growth, profitability and ownership. The results from the study imply that the independent variables covering size and profitability have the highest impact on share price performance after listing and that ownership had the least impact. The final model with the independent variables that had the highest relevance still only display a small significant correlation with an adjusted R2 = 0.09, which is understandable due to the nature of share prices not being able to be predicted one year into the future. Furthermore, the stock market is a large and complex system of many unknowns, which aggravates the process of simplifying and quantifying data of only one source into a regression model with high predictability. / Syftet med denna studie är att identifiera vilka företagsspecifika parametrar före en börsintroduktion som har en betydande inverkan på aktiekursutvecklingen ett år efter notering. Detta görs genom att analysera noteringar på Stockholmsbörsen från 2014 till 2019.  Metoden som har använts är en multipel linjär regression med justerad \\ aktiekursutveckling som responsvariabel och 7 specifika företagsdatapunkter som regressorer. Aktiekursutvecklingen i företag anpassas till SIX Return Index och de sju företagsvariablerna täcker storlek, tillväxt, lönsamhet och ägande. Resultaten från studien antyder att regressorer som täcker storlek och lönsamhet har störst inverkan på aktiekursutvecklingen efter notering och att ägandet hade minst påverkan. Den slutliga modellen med de regressorer som hade störst relevans visar fortfarande endast en liten signifikant korrelation med en justerad R2 = 0,09, vilket är förståeligt på grund av att aktiekursernas karaktär inte kan förutses ett år in i framtiden. Dessutom är aktiemarknaden ett stort och komplext system med många okända faktorer, vilket förvärrar processen att förenkla och kvantifiera data från endast en källa till en regressionsmodell med hög förutsägbarhet.

It is well established in the financial economics literature that potential gains from international diversification are generated from the imperfect correlation between national stock market returns. This empirical study explores the factors that impede perfect integration among national equity markets by examining emerging markets data. The first major topic of the dissertation is to re-visit the debate on the relative importance of country and industry effects in the cross-sectional variation of stock returns. By applying the standard Heston and Rouwenhorst (1994) dummy variable decomposition method to $U. S. nominal returns from 11 industry sectors of 13 emerging markets from 1984 to 2004, this work confirms that country effects do play a dominant role in determining the cross-sectional variation in stock returns in emerging markets but since late 1990s, the industry effects have become increasingly important. This conclusion is robust even after the removal of three potential biases: inflation rate, exchange rate and interest rate effects, all of which may amplify the country effects. The second topic is to investigate the debate from the perspective of stock risk. Stock risk is modeled and calculated independently from a return model with ARCH type errors. By applying the standard dummy variable decomposition method to stock risks, the empirical evidence is found to support the conclusions drawn on stock return decompositions. Finally, in order to find the fundamental sources of the country and industry factors, pure country and industry effects are then regressed on fundamental characteristics of country and industry. The findings show that the change in the variables representing the exchange rate can explain a substantial amount of the country effect variations, while at the same time, banking and stock markets development also contribute to the variations. The regressions also find evidence that the legal origin of the market does matter to stock returns. Regressions on industry effects are not as promising as the results of the country effects regression. Only the geographical concentration of industries is found to explain a small amount of the industry effects.

Following the development of international trade, exchange rate uncertainty is a majorsource of risk for corporations involved in international activities. It has forcedmanagers and academics to pay more attention to the effect of exchange rate volatilityon firm value, particularly in developed countries. In the 1990s Asian financial crises,the stock return volatility of US multinational firms increases significantly with therapid expansion of Asian currency crises to world stock market. It led academics andinvestors to pay increasing attention to examine exchange rate exposure in Asia stockmarkets. Nowadays the value of U.S. dollar increased volatility against Asian countries’currency since U.S. financial crisis beginning in August 2007. From what we know, fewof researches report the impact of US financial crisis for Asia firms. This paper aims toexplore the relation between exchange rate movement and firm values in Asian markets. The main purpose of this paper is to examine whether a significant contemporaneousand lagged variability of Asian firms’ stock returns are affected by exchange ratemovement in Asian markets, such as Hong Kong, Singapore, China, Taiwan, andMalaysia during the period from August 2005 to March 2010. Differences of capitalmaturity were compared with among these five Asian economies, covering bothdeveloped markets and emerging markets in Asia. This comparison makes sense tounderstand the efficient market hypothesis theory. In order to ensure our research’svalidity and reliability, sample firms are randomly chosen by the method of stratifiedsampling. The second step in this study is to examine the impact of firm-specific factorson sensitivity to exchange rate movement for those firms with a significant exchangerate exposure. The five firm specific factors are firm size, leverage situation, hedgingactivities, foreign involvement level, and industry classification. The main methods inthis quantitative research are simple and multiple linear regressions. The ordinary leastsquares method in SPSS program was used to estimate the parameters for eachindependent variable. Using a sample of 182 listed firms in these five sample markets, except China,exchange rate exposure of firms in other four Asian markets increases significantly insome sub-period during three sub-periods. After examining the sensitivity to weeklyexchange rate movement of local currency to US Dollar, it is noticeable for academicsthat there is no obvious difference between developed markets and emerging markets inAsia during the period of August 2005 to March 2010. Moreover, the relationshipbetween exchange rate and stock returns varied from markets with respect to exchangerate regimes and level of capital control. As to firm-specific factors, firm size wasnegatively related to exchange rate exposure and this effect was stronger in developedmarkets than other. Similar to previous studies, Asian markets also showed thatexchange rate exposure differed among industries. However, the effect on exchange rateexposure is not significant caused by leverage, foreign sales and hedging activityinvolvement. Suggestions and recommendations for further studies are provided in thelast part of this paper.

The impact of the introduction of derivatives on the underlying stock is a debatable topic among the researchers. The issue is quite controversial as contradictory results have been obtained by researchers in various stock markets. The purpose of this study is to examine the volatility and the liquidity effect on the underlying stock after the introduction of index options. We have investigated volatility and liquidity effect by collecting sample data from the stock markets of India, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, only markets which are offering index options in Asia.   Applying the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) model, we have examined the conditional volatility of intraday (high frequency) returns for each stock market, before and after the introduction of index options. We have also examined the liquidity effect through t-test and Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test. We used t-test to determine the mean differences between the trading volume of pre-index and post-index options periods.    By comparing the estimated parameters and the coefficient of conditional volatility in pre and post period of index options introductions, we have examined that the derivatives trading dramatically increases the persistence of the conditional volatility for all the selected stock markets. We also observed mixed evidence in context to liquidity effect. In the stock exchanges of Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Thailand, we found that the respective markets become more liquid in the post index options periods in contrast to pre index options period. In these markets trading volume increased significantly after the introduction of index options.  On the other hand, India, Malaysia and Singapore stock markets show no liquidity effect in the post-index option period.   Finally, the empirical results of our study conclude that the introduction of index options on the selected Asian stock markets have increased in stock return volatility and liquidity on the underlying stocks.

本研究探討財務年報公布時間點的早晚是否對股票報酬率有定價的能力。我們透過盈餘管理、訊號效果與資訊不對稱理論推論財務年報公布時間點的早晚會與下一年的股票報酬率有相關。本研究的樣本來自1995年到2016年所有上市上櫃公司（但不含金融股）的財報資料及市場資料。 實證結果顯示沒有充分證據能說明財務年報公布時間點的早晚會對股票報酬率有定價的能力。此結果支持Fama (1970)提出的效率市場假說(Efficient-market hypothesis)，即當證券市場中的公司股價完全反映出包括公司財務資訊與公布時間點的差異等所有可以獲得的信息帶來的影響，我們就認為市場為效率市場。即使是在較早公布的資訊中好消息的比重較高的情況下，投資人對提早公布財務年報的公司進行投資也無法獲取較高的報酬，反映出公布時間的早晚對股票報酬率不具定價的能力。 / This study examines the relation between the early or late annual report disclosure and the changes of the return on portfolios over time. Empirical results suggest that the stock returns are not significantly related to the disclosure time of annual report. The fact that financial characteristics and stock returns are not related to the sooner or later annual report disclosure supports the Efficient-market hypothesis. However, in the long run, we did not find the annual report disclosure with the predictive power of the systemic risk of companies. Furthermore, firms with early disclosures are more likely to beat analysts' prediction than firms with late disclosures, but we still do not find such disclosure with significant pricing power of stock returns.

We evaluate the validity of the Adaptive Market Hypothesis (AMH) in a Swedish context by testing for stock return predictability on the OMXS30 stock index between 1986 and 2014 using daily returns and monthly two year moving subsamples. To our knowledge, this is the first study to evaluate the AMH in a Swedish context. Three tests for linear independence based on Lo and MacKinlay (1988) variance ratio test, namely the Chow and Denning joint test as well as Wright (2000) joint rank and sign tests are used. We also test for non-linear independence using the BDS test statistics. Presented in our findings is evidence of time-varying predictability where stock returns go through periods of return predictability and non-predictability. When evaluating the different market conditions (volatility, bull, bear, up, down and normal markets) we find that these different market conditions govern the degree of stock return predictability in different ways. Our findings support the AMH on the OMXS30 stock index and in contrast to previous research regarding market efficiency on the Swedish stock market, we do not find persistent stock return predictability over the short and long term.

The discussion about the corporate sustainability issues getting more importance in recent days. The stock markets around the world also are affected with this subject of discussion. Investors as well as the companies theirselves are considering sustainability concepts during taking their investment decision strategies. Many index providers launched different ’Sustainable stock’ indices around the world to recognise these new investment decision choices. But do the investors actually care about the sustainability during their investment choices? The purpose of the study was to explore the answer of this unsolved question. Towards achieving the goal the study has been conducted to explore the relationships between the announcement of the ’Dow Jones sustainability Index Emerging Markets’ and the market reactions. Though there were some efforts, which were done to understand the patterns of the relationships between these two variables in developed markets, but no such study has been conducted in case of emerging markets. An event study was conducted to find out the answer of the research question. Five years panel data from 2015 to 2019 of the listed companies on the ’Dow Jones sustainability Index Emerging Markets’ were considered as the study sample to analyse the market reactions for the announcement of this index of this study period. The findings of the study did not recieve any significant influences of the announcement of inclusion, exclusion and continuation events on the stock market return at that study period. That means the investors in the emerging markets did not care about the sustainable performance of the listed companies during their investment decisions. But this study provide a deep insight about the future trend of sustainable investment, as the announcement events had some non-significant influences on the return trend. The results of the study indicate that investors are getting aware of the corporate sustainable performances day by day. Hopefully these insights give us the opportunity to anticipate that the investors will consider the sustainability issues more in their investment decision making process in the future.

Defining ambiguity as investor's uncertainty about the precision of the observed information, Chapter One constructs an empirical measure of ambiguity based on analysts' earnings forecast information, and finds that the market tends to react more negatively to highly ambiguous bad news, while it tends to be less responsive to highly ambiguous good news. This result supports the theoretical argument of Epstein and Schneider (2003, 2008) that ambiguity-averse investors take a worst-case assessment of the information precision, when they are uncertain about the information precision. In addition, Chapter One shows that returns on stocks exposed to highly ambiguous and intangible information are more negatively skewed. Chapter Two finds that certain traders are informed about either the forthcoming analysts' forecasts or long-term value of the stock, and informed traders prefer to use medium-size trades to exploit their private information advantage. Specifically, medium-size trade imbalance prior to the forecast announcements is positively correlated with the nature of forecast revisions, while in the days immediately after the forecasts medium-size trade imbalance is positively correlated with future stock returns for up to four months. Small-size trade imbalance is also positively correlated with future returns but only following downward revisions. In contrast, it is also shown that large trades placed right after the forecasts are unprofitable and generate slightly negative profits in the long run. Overall, our results are consistent with the "stealth trading hypothesis" proposed by Barclay and Warner (1993).