This thesis consists of one stock return predictability study and two international risk exposure studies. The first study shows that the statistical significance of out-of-sample predictability of market returns given by Kelly and Pruitt (2013), using a partial least squares methodology, constructed from the valuation ratios of portfolios, is overstated for two reasons. Firstly, the analysis is conducted on gross returns rather than excess returns, and this raises the apparent predictability of the equity premium due to the inclusion of predictable movements of interest rates. Secondly, the bootstrap statistics used to assess out-of-sample significance do not account for small-sample bias in the estimated coefficients. This bias is well known to affect in-sample tests of significance and I show that it is also important for out-of-sample tests of significance. Accounting for both these effects can radically change the conclusions; for example, the recursive out-of-sample R2 values for the sample period 1965-2010 are insignificant for the prediction of one-year excess returns, and one-month returns, except in the case of the book-to-market ratios of six size- and value-sorted portfolios which are significant at the 10% level. The second study examines whether U.S. common stocks are exposed to international risks, which I define as shocks to foreign markets that are orthogonal to U.S. market returns. By sorting stocks on past exposure to this risk factor I show that it is possible to create portfolios with an ex-post spread in exposure to international risk. I examine whether the international risk is priced in the cross-section of U.S. stocks, and find that for small stocks an increase in exposure to international risk results in lower returns relative to the Fama-French three-factor model. I conduct similar analysis on a measure of the international value premium and find little evidence of this risk being priced in U.S. stocks. The third study examines whether a portfolios of U.S. stocks can mimic foreign index returns, thereby providing investors with the benefits of international diversification without the need to invest directly in assets that trade abroad. I test this proposition using index data from seven developed markets and eight emerging markets over the period 1975-2013. Portfolios of U.S. stocks are constructed out-of-sample to mimic these international indices using a step-wise procedure that selects from a variety of industry portfolios, stocks of multinational corporations, country funds and American depositary receipts. I also use a partial least squares approach to form mimicking portfolios. I show that investors are able to gain considerable exposure to emerging market indices using domestically traded stocks. However, for developed market indices it is difficult to obtain home-made exposure beyond the simple exposure of foreign indices to the U.S. market factor. Using mean-variance spanning tests I find that, with few exceptions, international indices do not improve over the investment frontier provided by the domestically constructed alternative of investing in the U.S. market index and portfolios of industries and multinational corporations.

In this paper we empirically explore how characteristics of the domestic financial system influence the international allocation of consumption risk using a sample of OECD countries. Our results show that the extent of risk sharing achieved does not depend on the overall development of the domestic financial system per se. Rather, it depends on how the financial system is organized. Specifically, we find that countries characterized by developed financial markets are less exposed to idiosyncratic risk, whereas the development of the banking sector contributes little to the international diversification of consumption risk. We also find that countries with market-based financial systems manage to share a significantly larger fraction of their country-specific risk than bank-based economies. / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

本文研究目的是在探討跨國的投資者在面對國際投資日益開放的同時，是否充分的利用國際上的資產市場以分散投資者所面對的風險。本文參考Brandt, Cochrane, and Santa-Clara（2006），建立一種衡量國際間風險分散程度的風險分散指數，並以台灣為本國基準，取台灣前三大貿易夥伴：美國、日本、中國為外國基準，以分析此四國的國際風險分散指數，衡量的標的為各國資產市場中的主要股票交易市場指數報酬率，以分析各國風險分散的情形。此外我們亦嘗試解釋國際間風險分散的情形並解釋我們所計算出的結果，並進行一些模型參數的演算，以分析在面對其他總體變化時將會遇到的情形。經由本文的實證研究發現，對於台灣而言，在國際間的風險分散程度是偏高的，亦即，面對此四國的資產市場，台灣投資者的投資配置符合風險分散的趨勢，當匯率波動愈小時，國際風險分散程度亦將愈高，大致上與Brandt et al.(2006)之以美國為本國基準所得之國際風險分散程度結果相似。 / This thesis tries to discuss if risks are shared internationally by the international asset markets. This study refers to the Brandt, Cochrane, and Santa-Clara (2006) which built an international risk sharing index to measure the degree of international risk sharing. We set up a international risk sharing indices between Taiwan and its important trading partners, US, Japan and China by the asset returns composed by the main stock indices in each country. Furthermore, we try to explain the empirical results and to show how the degree of international risk sharing will different with the changes of the macro-variables. Our empirical analyses find that the degree of the international risk sharing for Taiwan using asset-based method is better than we think. In addition, the empirical results of this thesis are similar to Brandt et al. (2006) that if the volatility of exchange rates declines, the degree of the international risk sharing will be better.

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This collection of essays examines the topic of macroeconomic stabilisation in an international context, focusing on monetary policy, capital controls and exchange rates. Chapter 1, written in collaboration with Giancarlo Corsetti and Joao Duarte, reconsiders the effects of common monetary policy shocks across countries in the euro area, using a data-rich factor model and identifying shocks with high-frequency surprises around policy announcements. We show that the degree of heterogeneity in the response to shocks, while being low in financial variables and output, is significant in consumption, consumer prices and macro variables related to the labour and housing markets. Mirroring country-specific institutional and market differences, we find that home ownership rates are significantly correlated with the strength of the housing channel in monetary policy transmission. We document a high dispersion in the response to shocks of house prices and rents and show that, similar to responses in the US, these variables tend to move in different directions. In Chapter 2, I build a two-country, two-good model to examine the welfare effects of capital controls, finding that under certain circumstances, a shut-down in asset trade can be a Pareto improvement. Further, I examine the robustness of the result to parameter changes, explore a wider set of policy instruments and confront computational issues in this class of international macroeconomic models. I document that within an empirically relevant parameter span for the trade elasticity, the gains from capital controls might be significantly larger than suggested by previous contributions. Moreover, I establish that a refined form of capital controls in the shape of taxes and tariffs cannot improve upon the outcome under financial autarky. Finally, results show that the conjunction of pruning methods and endogenous discount factors can remove explosive behaviour from this class of models and restore equilibrating properties. In Chapter 3, I use a panel of 20 emerging market currencies to assess whether a model that combines fundamental and non-fundamental exchange rate forecasting approaches can successfully predict risk premia (i.e. currency excess returns) over the short horizon. In doing so, I aim to overcome three main shortcomings of earlier research: i) Sensitivity to the chosen sample period; ii) seemingly arbitrary selection of explanatory variables that differs from currency to currency; and iii) difficulty in interpreting forecasts beyond the numerical signal. Based on a theoretical model of currency risk premia, I use real exchange rate strength combined with indicators for carry, momentum and economic sentiment to homogeneously forecast risk premia across all 20 currencies in the sample at a monthly frequency. In doing so, the model remains largely agnostic about structural choices, keeping arbitrarily imposed restrictions to a minimum. Results from portfolio construction suggest that returns are significant and robust both across currencies as well as over time, with Sharpe Ratios in out-of-sample tests above 0.7.