Abstract This thesis analyses the stock market synchronicity of 34 emerging markets and compares the findings with seven developed markets. The study uses weekly stock return data and the final dataset includes approximately 20.8 million weekly observations for 40,014 firms across the world. Morck et al. (2000) are among the first to introduce the topic of stock market synchronisation and argue that stock markets in economies with high per capita GDP move in a relatively unsynchronised manner over time, in contrast to stock prices in low per capita GDP economies. They also suggest that stock synchronicity is associated with macroeconomic indicators including rule of law, inflation, corruption and geographical size. In addition, Skaife et al. (2006) propose a further measure of stock synchronicity based on the proportion of zero returns and argue that the zero-return measure is a superior measure of stock market co-movement. The study uses both measures proposed by Morck et al. (2000) and one measure proposed by Skaife et al. (2006) for synchronicity analysis and extends the analysis to cover a ten year period, a larger sample of shares and more recent measures of country specific characteristics. It is found that stock markets in emerging economies are more synchronous than in developed economies over the sample period using the classical measure. It is also found that over the 10-year study period the synchronicity measure is stationary. There is evidence of a statistically significant negative correlation between stock synchronicity and both government accountability and corruption for the emerging markets using the cross-sectional analysis. The R-square measure of stock synchronicity averages 0.091 for the emerging markets and 0.045 for the developed economies, suggesting that higher stock price co-movement is evident in emerging economies. Further, there is a statistically significant positive correlation between the R-square measure and both corruption and inflation. The study also uses the zero-return measure of stock synchronicity suggested by Skaife et al. (2006). It is found that the zero-return measure for emerging economies is higher than for developed economies. Surprisingly, China and the S&P 500 group of companies exhibit the lowest values for the zero-return measure during this period, which is inconsistent with the classical measure and the R-square measure. Further, panel data analysis shows that GDP per capita and trade openness have a strong effect on the zero-return measure. The Pearson correlation and Spearman rank correlation coefficient indicate that the classical measure and the R-square measure are positively correlated and appear to capture similar aspects of the markets in the study, which is also consistent with cross-sectional analysis results. In contrast, the zero-return measure shows either insignificant or negative correlation with the classical measure and the R-square measure for most sub-period and full period analysis. Finally, there is evidence that emerging stock markets are more synchronous over time than in developed financial markets. It is found that common-law country stock synchronicity is lower than in civil-law countries or post-communist countries using the classical measure and the R-square measure.

Charles University in Prague Faculty of Social Sciences Institute of Economic Studies MASTER THESIS Financial Stress Transmission from Developed to Emerging Countries Author: Bc. Nicolae Gavrilenco Supervisor: doc. Roman Horvàth, Ph.D. Academic Year: 2012/2013 Abstract In this research we have analyzed the financial system as it is today, describing the implications financial innovation had and the impact of the recent financial crisis. We tried to understand the nature of the financial stress and its measures. In the context of world financial integration it was also necessary to have a review upon the financial stress transmission channels from developed to emerging countries, determining the linkages and their measures. We employed a structural VAR model to determine whether there is empirical proof of financial Stress transmission from developed to emerging countries and see if financial integration represents the decisive factor in financial stress transmission. Our results suggest that there is a significant impact of financial stress in developed countries on the output of emerging ones. However we can observe an increasing influence of country-specific factors in explaining the variation in the rest of the variable of our model. The results also indicate the level of international financial...

This study investigates the peer effect in the asset pricing models in the international stock market. The peer effect theory proposes a dependence between individual decisions due to interactions that create a social network structure. The idea is that we need to understand the correlation between outcomes of individuals that interact in an environment and which could lead to a homogenous pattern of movement especially on asset pricing models. We use a sample of almost 7,000 companies listed on fourteen countries from 2006 to 2016 and arrange them in four peer groups. Since the peer effect has a reflection problem, we divide our empirical models in two aspects. First, we analyze the relationship between stock return from the firm, its financial aspects and the financial aspects for the peer group using a fixed effect regressor. Then, we try to understand the relationship between stock return from a firm, the stock return from the peer firms, the financial aspects from the firm and the financial aspects for the peer group by estimating a 2SLS model with an instrumental variable. Our findings show the existence of peer effects on stock return for all the peer groups. Also, the effects are always positive regardless if we select emerging or developed markets. Moreover, there is exogenous peer effect from the characteristics of the peer firms in the stock return that depends on the indicator and the peer group. Market-to-book ratio of the peers presents a positive relationship with the stock return. As a robustness test, we re-estimate the models for two subsamples and find that the results are consistent to the previous ones. / Este estudo investiga o efeito dos pares nos modelos de precificação de ativos no mercado acionário internacional. A teoria do efeito de pares propõe uma dependência entre decisões individuais devido a interações que criam uma estrutura de rede social. A ideia é entender a correlação entre os resultados de indivíduos que interagem em um ambiente e que podem levar a um padrão de movimento homogêneo, especialmente em modelos de precificação de ativos. Utiliza-se uma amostra de quase 7.000 empresas de capital aberto em catorze países de 2006 a 2016 considerando quatro grupos de referência. Como o efeito par tem o conhecido problema de reflexão, divide-se os modelos empíricos em dois aspectos. Primeiro, analisa-se a relação entre o retorno das ações, os aspectos financeiros da firma e os aspectos financeiros do grupo de referência utilizando um modelo de efeito fixo em painel. Em seguida, busca-se entender a relação entre o retorno das ações de uma empresa, o retorno das ações das empresas pares, os aspectos financeiros de ambas, estimando um modelo 2SLS com uma variável instrumental. Os resultados mostram a existência de comovimento no retorno das ações para todos os grupos de referência. Os efeitos do retorno das ações dos pares são positivos e mais intensos para a indústria e país independentemente se se escolhe mercados emergentes ou desenvolvidos. Além disso, existe um efeito de pares exógeno a partir das características das empresas pares, principalmente para razão market-to-book, que depende do indicador financeiro e do grupo de referência. Como teste de robustez, reestimou-se os modelos para duas subamostras que mostraram resultados consistentes com os anteriores.

This study investigated factors affecting housing finance supply in Nigeria. Housing finance is a major factor determining the quality and tenure of housing consumption, the overall financial portfolio of the public and the stability and effectiveness of the financial system. In both developed and emerging economies, sovereign governments have intervened in the markets by setting up institutions characterised by a significant degree of regulation and segmentation from the rest of the financial markets and very often with governments providing subsidised housing finance. Attempts were made to develop an empirical model to reveal the underlying factors affecting housing finance in Nigeria. Time series data from sampled Universal Money Deposit Banks (UMDBs) balance sheets between 2003 and 2007 were used to assess the ability of the financial institutions to engage in long-term lending. Additional instruments in form of questionnaire, for the sectoral allocation of loans and advances by these financial institutions were employed to gather information from Corporate Banking / Loans and Advances Managers coupled with unstructured interviews. Supplementary questionnaires were directed to the users of housing finance at the household level as control for validity to the research findings. Applying a multiple regression approach, the model identified that housing finance supply in Nigeria is significantly driven by clusters of factors related to share capital and the reserves of the financial institutions. It is closely observed that housing finance models in the developed economies, which are largely financed by deposit liabilities, cannot be wholly adopted in the emerging economies. The implication for practice therefore is that financial institutions in the emerging economies must adequately increase their capital base for effective housing finance supply and introduce mortgage products with long-term tenure to actively mobilise resources for mortgage lending.

This thesis documents, using an unbalanced panel of Top 1000 World banks with observations for 2005 - 2009, three main aspects related to cost and profit efficiency in banking. First, it established that there is no correlation between a bank's rank in the Top and its rank given by the efficiency scores. However, the size of the banks plays a positive role on the cost efficiency of the institution, big banks having higher cost efficiencies than small banks. Conversely, the profit efficiency is equal across different sizes. Second, it verified that for 2005 - 2009 there is no evidence that banks from the developed countries are more efficient than banks from emerging economies. This finding is further supported by the third aspect, which shows that banks originating in the developed economies, with large exposures to more sophisticated banking products, have been hit the hardest by the financial crisis. However the banks managed to shrink their cost inefficiency while losing efficiency on the revenue side. The post crisis, 2009, proved to be a year in which banks across countries and regions converged in terms of efficiency and plateaued at about 10% and 25% for cost and profit inefficiency respectively.