This dissertation examines three distinctive issues that concern the regulators and policy makers in the development of financial markets. It contains three stand-alone research projects within the context of law, finance and economic growth. Chapter 2 examines the dynamic relationship between banks and economic growth from the points of view of market efficiency and asset pricing theory. Publicly traded banks are broadly representative of a country???s banking sector, so that banking industry stock prices will broadly reflect the performance of a country???s banking sector. Because previous research has established that the institutional framework, as well as the aggregate size, of the banking sector can significantly affect economic growth, this chapter investigates whether the stock returns on a country???s banking sector contain information about future economic growth, and whether the specific country and institutional characteristics that affect the functioning of the banking system and market efficiency also influence this relationship. Using the data from 18 developed and 18 emerging markets, the chapter finds a significant and positive relationship between bank excess return and future economic growth in both the time-series and panel analyses. The chapter also finds that this positive relationship is significantly strengthened by the enforcement of insider trading law, by banking crises, by bank disclosure regulations and financial development, but is weakened by government ownership of banks. Chapter 3 investigates the role of bank idiosyncratic volatility in economic growth and systemic banking crises. Using the same dataset from Chapter 2, this chapter finds an ambiguous relationship between bank volatility and economic growth in the time-series studies, which suggests that the effect of bank volatility on economic growth is more country-specific. In the panel analyses, the chapter finds a negative but very weak relationship between bank volatility and future economic growth. This negative relationship is magnified by banking crises and bank disclosure standards, but is alleviated by the government ownership of banks, the enforcement of insider trading law and financial development. The chapter goes further to examine whether bank volatility leads to the occurrence of systemic banking crises, and finds that the marginal effect of bank volatility on the probability of banking crises is very weak for the sample of all markets, and this result is mainly driven by the data from the emerging markets. However, bank volatility is a significant predictor of banking crises even after being controlled for macroeconomic indicators, which implies that market forces are more powerful in promoting the soundness of the banking system in developed markets. We also find that those macroeconomic and banking risk management indicators have different impacts on the probability of banking crises for the emerging and developed markets. Therefore, caution needs to be taken in interpreting the cross-country results of the studies on banking crises. Chapter 4 studies the corporate governance issues in China, a significant developing country that has been neglected by the current law and finance literature. Incorporated with the legal environment and ownership structure of China???s listed companies, the chapter develops a simple game model to study a neglected aspect of current corporate governance literature: the expropriation arising from the mixture of weak investor protection, ownership concentration coexisting with ownership dispersion, and the absence of a controlling shareholder. The last two chapters find that government ownership undermines the positive link between bank excess return and economic growth, but alleviates the negative impact of bank volatility on growth as well. This chapter shows that government ownership is also a two-edged sword in corporate governance in China: it leads to a double-agency problem; however, the strong legal protection of State assets also increases the cost of expropriation. Using the data from 1996 to 2003, the chapter finds the empirical evidence consistent with the model. By analysing the puzzles in China???s stock market, the chapter suggests that improving the legal protection of investors is the key issue in the future development of the financial market.

Στην παρούσα εργασία ερευνάται η κερδοφορία του τεχνικού κανόνα του κινητού μέσου όρου στο χρηματιστήριο Αθηνών. Συγκεκριμένα, χρησιμοποιούνται ημερήσια δεδομένα του δείκτη FTSE 20 για την περίοδο 2005 έως 2011.Σύμφωνα με τα κύρια αποτελέσματα της έρευνας, οι αποδόσεις αγοράς των μετοχών δεν διαφέρουν από τις αποδόσεις πώλησης των μετοχών. Συνεπώς, με την υιοθέτηση του συγκεκριμένου τεχνικού κανόνα δεν είναι εφικτή η παραγωγή υπερβάλλοντων κερδών. Ωστόσο, παρατηρείται ότι η αγορά είναι καθοδική από το 2008 και μετά, με αποτέλεσμα σε πολλές περιπτώσεις να παρουσιάζεται σημαντική διαφορά μεταξύ των διακυμάνσεων των αποδόσεων αγοράς και των αποδόσεων πώλησης των μετοχών. Όπως είναι φυσικό, κάτι τέτοιο δεν έχει καμία επίδραση στο αποτέλεσμα της μη κερδοφορίας. Επίσης, τα αποτελέσματα της έρευνας δείχνουν ότι οι πιθανότητες κέρδους μέσω της τεχνικής ανάλυσης ελαχιστοποιούνται έως και μηδενίζονται μακροπρόθεσμα. / In this work, the profitability of the moving average MA trading rule is examined in the Athens Stock Exchange. Particularly, dialy data of stock index FTSE 20 are used, over 2005-2011 periods. According to the main results, stocks' buy returns do not differ from stocks' sell returns. Consequently, generation of excess profits is not feasible with the adoption of this technical rule. It is, however, observed that the market has been in recession since 2008, so that there seems to be signigicant difference between the variance of buy returns and the variance of sell returns. It is obvious that, this has no effect on the main results. Also, results show that the probabilities of profitability using technical analysis are minimized or even become zero in the long run.

O principal objetivo da dissertação é verificar se é possível superar o principal índice acionário brasileiro (Ibovespa) no longo prazo utilizando indicadores relativos (múltiplos de mercado), baseados em dados passados ou projetados. Foram escolhidos quatro indicadores, advindos de uma pesquisa com relatórios de 33 instituições que operam no mercado brasileiro e na disponibilidade de dados históricos e projetados. São eles: Preço/Lucro (P/L), Enterprise Value/Ebitda (EV/Ebitda), Preço/Valor Patrimonial (P/VPA) e Enterprise Value/Receita Líquida (EV/RL). A comparação entre portfolios passados e projetados procura verificar se é válido o que o mercado aplica na prática, de melhor performance dos dados futuros em relação aos históricos. Considerando limitações inerentes ao mercado financeiro e ao período da pesquisa, os resultados sugerem que é possível obter um desempenho superior ao principal benchmark nacional, o Ibovespa, principalmente usando carteiras de Valor baseadas em menor Preço/Lucro (P/L) projetado e/ou passado. Os indicadores de menor Preço/ Valor Patrimonial (P/VPA) e Enterprise Value/Receita Líquida (EV/RL) desempenharam bem, inclusive acima do Ibovespa, contudo foram estatisticamente menos significantes do que o P/L em diversos testes. Em relação ao múltiplo EV/Ebitda, os resultados para o portfolio de menor índice projetado foram um tanto quanto decepcionantes. O segundo indicador mais utilizado pelo mercado não teve significância estatística em seus retornos se comparado com zero. A montagem de portfolios considerou um caso base com 12 ações igualmente ponderadas. Também foram feitas sensibilidades de porfolios compostos de diferentes números de ações, bem como com ponderação por valor de mercado, exames de consistência através de portfolios randômicos e testes de retornos diários/mensais. / The main goal of this dissertation is to verify if it is possible to outperform the Brazilian stock index (Ibovespa) over the long term using relative valuation, based on past and predicted data. It was chosen four market multiples, according to a survey done with 33 brazilian investment firms: Price/Earnings (P/E), Enterprise Value/Ebitda (EV/Ebitda), Price/Book (P/B) and Enterprise Value/Net Sales (EV/Sales). Considering the limitation of time and data availability, the results suggest that it is possible to beat the market index using relative valuation, mainly with projected and past Value Price/Earnings portfolios. The P/B and EV/sales portfolios also had a good performance, but in smaller proportion when compared against P/E. Regarding to EV/Ebitda, the results were a little disappointing as the pure returns were not statistically different from zero. The base case portfolios were compounded by 12 stocks equally weighted. It was also run a sensitivity analysis using portfolios with different compositions (ranging from 5 to 18 stocks), randon portfolios and with value weighted.

O principal objetivo da dissertação é verificar se é possível superar o principal índice acionário brasileiro (Ibovespa) no longo prazo utilizando indicadores relativos (múltiplos de mercado), baseados em dados passados ou projetados. Foram escolhidos quatro indicadores, advindos de uma pesquisa com relatórios de 33 instituições que operam no mercado brasileiro e na disponibilidade de dados históricos e projetados. São eles: Preço/Lucro (P/L), Enterprise Value/Ebitda (EV/Ebitda), Preço/Valor Patrimonial (P/VPA) e Enterprise Value/Receita Líquida (EV/RL). A comparação entre portfolios passados e projetados procura verificar se é válido o que o mercado aplica na prática, de melhor performance dos dados futuros em relação aos históricos. Considerando limitações inerentes ao mercado financeiro e ao período da pesquisa, os resultados sugerem que é possível obter um desempenho superior ao principal benchmark nacional, o Ibovespa, principalmente usando carteiras de Valor baseadas em menor Preço/Lucro (P/L) projetado e/ou passado. Os indicadores de menor Preço/ Valor Patrimonial (P/VPA) e Enterprise Value/Receita Líquida (EV/RL) desempenharam bem, inclusive acima do Ibovespa, contudo foram estatisticamente menos significantes do que o P/L em diversos testes. Em relação ao múltiplo EV/Ebitda, os resultados para o portfolio de menor índice projetado foram um tanto quanto decepcionantes. O segundo indicador mais utilizado pelo mercado não teve significância estatística em seus retornos se comparado com zero. A montagem de portfolios considerou um caso base com 12 ações igualmente ponderadas. Também foram feitas sensibilidades de porfolios compostos de diferentes números de ações, bem como com ponderação por valor de mercado, exames de consistência através de portfolios randômicos e testes de retornos diários/mensais. / The main goal of this dissertation is to verify if it is possible to outperform the Brazilian stock index (Ibovespa) over the long term using relative valuation, based on past and predicted data. It was chosen four market multiples, according to a survey done with 33 brazilian investment firms: Price/Earnings (P/E), Enterprise Value/Ebitda (EV/Ebitda), Price/Book (P/B) and Enterprise Value/Net Sales (EV/Sales). Considering the limitation of time and data availability, the results suggest that it is possible to beat the market index using relative valuation, mainly with projected and past Value Price/Earnings portfolios. The P/B and EV/sales portfolios also had a good performance, but in smaller proportion when compared against P/E. Regarding to EV/Ebitda, the results were a little disappointing as the pure returns were not statistically different from zero. The base case portfolios were compounded by 12 stocks equally weighted. It was also run a sensitivity analysis using portfolios with different compositions (ranging from 5 to 18 stocks), randon portfolios and with value weighted.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T13:53:30Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 RaimundaMLS_DISSERT.pdf: 638002 bytes, checksum: f4c7693a6b7a4b11a332a1d4e60703e4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-09-20 / The financial crisis that occurred between the years 2007 and 2008, known as the subprime crisis, has highlighted the governance of companies in Brazil and worldwide. To monitor the financial risk, quantitative tools of risk management were created in the 1990s, after several financial disasters. The market turmoil has also led companies to invest in the development and use of information, which are applied as tools to support process control and decision making. Numerous empirical studies on informational efficiency of the market have been made inside and outside Brazil, revealing whether the prices reflect the information available instantly. The creation of different levels of corporate governance on BOVESPA, in 2000, made the firms had greater impairment in relation to its shareholders with greater transparency in their information. The purpose of this study is to analyze how the subprime financial crisis has affected, between January 2007 and December 2009, the volatility of stock returns in the BM&BOVESPA of companies with greater liquidity at different levels of corporate governance. From studies of time series and through the studies of events, econometric tests were performed by the EVIEWS, and through the results obtained it became evident that the adoption of good practices of corporate governance affect the volatility of returns of companies / A crise financeira ocorrida entre os anos de 2007 e 2008, conhecida como crise do subprime, colocou em evid?ncia a governan?a das empresas no Brasil e no mundo. Para monitorar o risco financeiro, ferramentas quantitativas de gest?o de risco foram criadas na d?cada de 1990, ap?s v?rios desastres financeiros. A turbul?ncia do mercado tamb?m tem levado as empresas a investirem no desenvolvimento e utiliza??o de informa??es, que s?o aplicadas como ferramentas de apoio aos processos de controle e tomada de decis?o. In?meros estudos emp?ricos sobre efici?ncia informacional do mercado t?m sido efetuados dentro e fora do Brasil, revelando se os pre?os refletem instantaneamente as informa??es dispon?veis. A cria??o de n?veis diferenciados de governan?a corporativa na BOVESPA, em 2000, fez com que empresas tivessem maior comprometimento em rela??o aos seus acionistas, com maior n?vel de transpar?ncia em suas informa??es. A proposta desse trabalho ? analisar como a crise financeira do subprime afetou, entre janeiro de 2007 e dezembro de 2009, a volatilidade do retorno das a??es na BM&FBOVESPA de empresas com maior liquidez em diferentes n?veis de governan?a corporativa. A partir de estudos das s?ries temporais e, atrav?s de estudos de eventos, foram realizados testes econom?tricos, atrav?s do EVIEWS, e pelos resultados apresentados tornou-se evidente que a ado??o de boas pr?ticas de governan?a corporativa influenciam a volatilidade dos retornos das empresas

O principal objetivo da dissertação é verificar se é possível superar o principal índice acionário brasileiro (Ibovespa) no longo prazo utilizando indicadores relativos (múltiplos de mercado), baseados em dados passados ou projetados. Foram escolhidos quatro indicadores, advindos de uma pesquisa com relatórios de 33 instituições que operam no mercado brasileiro e na disponibilidade de dados históricos e projetados. São eles: Preço/Lucro (P/L), Enterprise Value/Ebitda (EV/Ebitda), Preço/Valor Patrimonial (P/VPA) e Enterprise Value/Receita Líquida (EV/RL). A comparação entre portfolios passados e projetados procura verificar se é válido o que o mercado aplica na prática, de melhor performance dos dados futuros em relação aos históricos. Considerando limitações inerentes ao mercado financeiro e ao período da pesquisa, os resultados sugerem que é possível obter um desempenho superior ao principal benchmark nacional, o Ibovespa, principalmente usando carteiras de Valor baseadas em menor Preço/Lucro (P/L) projetado e/ou passado. Os indicadores de menor Preço/ Valor Patrimonial (P/VPA) e Enterprise Value/Receita Líquida (EV/RL) desempenharam bem, inclusive acima do Ibovespa, contudo foram estatisticamente menos significantes do que o P/L em diversos testes. Em relação ao múltiplo EV/Ebitda, os resultados para o portfolio de menor índice projetado foram um tanto quanto decepcionantes. O segundo indicador mais utilizado pelo mercado não teve significância estatística em seus retornos se comparado com zero. A montagem de portfolios considerou um caso base com 12 ações igualmente ponderadas. Também foram feitas sensibilidades de porfolios compostos de diferentes números de ações, bem como com ponderação por valor de mercado, exames de consistência através de portfolios randômicos e testes de retornos diários/mensais. / The main goal of this dissertation is to verify if it is possible to outperform the Brazilian stock index (Ibovespa) over the long term using relative valuation, based on past and predicted data. It was chosen four market multiples, according to a survey done with 33 brazilian investment firms: Price/Earnings (P/E), Enterprise Value/Ebitda (EV/Ebitda), Price/Book (P/B) and Enterprise Value/Net Sales (EV/Sales). Considering the limitation of time and data availability, the results suggest that it is possible to beat the market index using relative valuation, mainly with projected and past Value Price/Earnings portfolios. The P/B and EV/sales portfolios also had a good performance, but in smaller proportion when compared against P/E. Regarding to EV/Ebitda, the results were a little disappointing as the pure returns were not statistically different from zero. The base case portfolios were compounded by 12 stocks equally weighted. It was also run a sensitivity analysis using portfolios with different compositions (ranging from 5 to 18 stocks), randon portfolios and with value weighted.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:26:50Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Paulo Roberto Domingues de Faria.pdf: 1135125 bytes, checksum: 6edb1659db23a9f945a0d8a4edd49911 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-02-02 / Fundo Mackenzie de Pesquisa / Market efficiency and rationality of economic agents are among the main subjects for debate in the area of Finance. With the development of the field of study of Behavioral Finance some serious works have been developed to improve the financial models with the incorporation of social and psychological elements to the financial theory. This paper presents some of the assumptions of the modern theory of finance and the main ideas of behavioral finance. It also presents empirical research involving the simulation of heterogeneous agents in an artificial stock market. The objective is to evaluate if the interaction of these agents can impact the behavior of asset prices in a different way from that expected by the traditional finance theories. / Entre os principais assuntos em discussão na área de Finanças estão as questões relacionadas à eficiência de mercado e à racionalidade dos agentes econômicos, que se apresentam como premissa para os principais modelos de finanças. Nos últimos anos surgiram trabalhos com o objetivo de aperfeiçoar esses modelos e suas premissas, a partir da incorporação de elementos sociais e psicológicos à teoria financeira. Esses trabalhos deram origem ao campo de estudos de Finanças Comportamentais. Esta dissertação apresenta algumas das premissas da teoria moderna de finanças e os principais pressupostos das finanças comportamentais. Além disso, apresenta pesquisa empírica envolvendo a simulação do comportamento de agentes heterogêneos em um mercado acionário artificial, utilizando o método de simulação baseada em agentes. Os resultados visam avaliar se a interação dos agentes pode impactar o comportamento de preços dos ativos de forma diferente da prevista pelas teorias de finanças.

The stock market has been objective of many researches that seek to identify the presence of some previsibility degree in the return series. Inside of this context grew the Market Efficiency Theory divided in three forms: weak efficiency, semi-strong and strong. The random walk hypothesis was created to test, empirically, the Market Efficiency in the weak-form. Acceptance or rejection brings implications as the possibility of its to get to foresee, somehow, based in past returns, the future returns, removing advantage of that to gain extraordinary incomes. To test the random walk, specialists in this subject they created, along the years, methods and, among these, they stand out the variance ratio tests that, initially they were applied in developed markets and, nowadays, it has also been used at emerging markets. For the development of the present research, with the intention of testing the random walk hypothesis in an emerging market (Brazil) and in a developed market (United States), were implemented the following variance ratio tests: simple, multiple, based in the ranks and signs. The returns of IBOVESPA were used, as proxy of the Brazilian stock market, and of S&P 500, to the North American market, collected daily and weekly in the period of January 03, 2000 to April 25, 2008. The results demonstrated an acceptance of the random walk hypothesis in most of the made tests appearing for a weak form of market efficiency. / O mercado de ações tem sido alvo de muitas pesquisas que visam identificar a presença de algum grau de previsibilidade nas séries de retornos. Dentro deste contexto desenvolveu-se a Teoria de Eficiência de Mercado dividida em três formas: eficiência fraca, semiforte e forte. A hipótese do caminho aleatório foi criada para testar, empiricamente, a Eficiência de Mercado na forma fraca. Sua aceitação ou rejeição traz implicâncias quanto a possibilidade de se conseguir prever, de alguma maneira, com base em retornos passados, os retornos futuros, tirando proveito disso para auferir rendimentos extraordinários. A fim de testar a hipótese do caminho aleatório estudiosos do assunto criaram, ao longo dos anos, métodos e, dentre estes, destacam-se os testes de quociente de variâncias que, inicialmente foram aplicados em mercados desenvolvidos e, atualmente, também tem sido utilizados em mercados emergentes. Para o desenvolvimento da presente pesquisa, com o intuito de testar a hipótese do caminho aleatório em um mercado emergente (Brasil) e em um mercado desenvolvido (Estados Unidos), foram aplicados os seguintes testes de quociente de variâncias: simples, múltiplas, com base nos postos e com base nos sinais. Foram utilizados os retornos do IBOVESPA, como proxy do mercado acionário brasileiro, e do S&P 500, para o mercado norte-americano, coletados diariamente e semanalmente no período de 03 de janeiro de 2000 a 25 de abril de 2008. Os resultados demonstraram uma aceitação da hipótese do caminho aleatório na maioria dos testes efetuados apontando para uma forma fraca de eficiência de mercado.

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.

Using the sample of three largest stocks from seven main market sectors in the US, the thesis examines the effect of information content of earnings announce­ ments on market reaction across sectors. Our findings prove the asymmetry of market reaction to different earnings surprise categories with negative-surprise reaction being the most profound. The financial markets tend to be less ef­ ficient in response to negative earnings surprises. Leakage of information is not present suggesting that insider trading is well-mitigated on the US capital markets. Furthermore, we investigate the market reaction to earnings surprises in different sectors separately and find that Consumer Staples and IT sector tend to be the most sensitive, on the contrary Telecommunication and Energy sector tend to be the least sensitive. G14; G15; G30JEL Classification Keywords Earnings announcement; Market reaction; Mar­ ket efficiency; Cross-sector analysis; Corpo­ rate disclosure; Insider trading; Post-earnings- announcement drift A u th o r's e-m ail p a v e l.prucekSgm ail. com S u p erv iso r's e-m ail kocenda@f s v . c u n i. cz