George Andrew Karolyi

A New Approach to Measuring Financial Contagion

This paper proposes a new approach to evaluate contagion in financial markets. Our measure of contagion captures the co-incidence of extreme return shocks across countries within a region and across regions that cannot be explained by linear propagation models of shocks. We characterize the extent of contagion, its economic significance, and its determinants using a multinomial logistic regression model. Applying our approach to daily returns of emerging markets during the 1990s, we find that contagion, when measured by the co-incidence within and across regions of extreme return shocks, is predictable and depends on regional interest rates, exchange rate changes, and conditional stock return volatility. Evidence that contagion is stronger for extreme negative returns than for extreme positive returns is mixed.

Does International Financial Contagion Really Exist

This article surveys the various definitions and taxonomies of international financial contagion in the academic literature and popular press and relates it to the existing evidence on co-movements in international asset prices, on the growth and volatility of international capital flows and on the relationship between flows and asset prices. The central argument of the article is that the empirical evidence is not as obviously consistent with the existence of market contagion as many researchers, the press, or market regulators believe. Policy implications of this alternative viewpoint are presented. Copyright 2003 by Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

The Variation of Economic Risk Premiums in Real Estate Returns

We examine the predictable components of returns on stocks, bonds, and real estate investment trusts (REITs). We employ a multiple-beta asset pricing model and find that there are varying degrees of predictability among stocks, bonds, and REITs. Furthermore, we find that most of the predictability of returns is associated with the economic variables employed in the asset pricing model. The stock market risk premium is highly important in capturing the predictable variation in stock portfolios, and the bond market risk premiums (term and risk structure of interest rates) are important in capturing the predictable variation in bond portfolios. For REITs, however, both the stock and bond market risk premiums capture the predictable variation in returns. REITs have comparable return predictability to stock portfolios. We conclude that there is an important economic risk premium for REITs that are not captured by traditional multiple-beta asset pricing models.

Terrorism and the Stock Market

This paper examines the stock price impact of terrorist attacks. Using an official list of terrorism related incidents compiled by the Counterterrorism Office of the U.S. Department of State, we identify 75 attacks between 1995 and 2002 in which publicly traded firms are targets. An event study analysis around the day of the attacks uncovers evidence of a statistically significant negative stock price reaction of -0.83%, which corresponds to an average loss per firm per attack of

Understanding Electricity Price Volatility Within and Across Markets

401 million in firm market capitalization. A cross sectional analysis of the abnormal returns indicates that the impact of terrorist attacks differs according to the home country of the target firm and the country in which the incident occurred. Attacks in countries that are wealthier and more democratic are associated with larger negative share price reactions. Most interestingly, we find that human capital losses, such as kidnappings of company executives, are associated with larger negative stock price reactions than physical losses, such as bombings of facilities or buildings. We discuss the implications of these findings for existing research on terrorism and for current policy debates like the renewal of the U.S. Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA).

Why do Foreign Firms Leave U.S. Equity Markets

This study analyzes how electricity price volatility evolves over time for different electricity trading hubs in several deregulated markets around the world. The goal is to uncover common features across hubs within each market in the daily spot price volatility processes related to seasonality, mean reversion, conditionally autoregressive heteroskedasticity (ARCH) and possibly time-dependent jumps. We apply our analysis to markets in U.S., Nord Pool, and Australia. We show that ARCH and time-dependent jumps are important statistical features of price volatility across all hubs in each market but with different levels of intensity. We also find that inferences about the role of seasonality components are sensitive to modeling of the ARCH and jump features.

The Impact of the Introduction of the Euro on Foreign Exchange Rate Risk Exposures

This paper investigates Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) deregistrations by foreign firms from the time the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) was passed in 2002 through 2008. We test two theories, the bonding theory and the loss of competitiveness theory, to understand why foreign firms leave U.S. equity markets and how deregistration affects their shareholders. Firms that deregister grow more slowly, need less capital, and experience poor stock return performance prior to deregistration compared to other foreign firms listed in the U.S. that do not deregister. Until the SEC adopted Exchange Act Rule 12h-6 in 2007 the deregistration process was extremely difficult for foreign firms. Easing these procedures led to a spike in deregistration activity in the second-half of 2007 that did not extend into 2008. We find that deregistrations are generally associated with adverse stock-price reactions, but these reactions are much weaker in 2007 than in other years. It is unclear whether SOX affected foreign-listed firms and deregistering firms adversely in general, but there is evidence that the smaller firms that deregistered after the adoption of Rule 12h-6 reacted more negatively to announcements that foreign firms would not be exempt from SOX. Overall, the evidence supports the bonding theory rather than the loss of competitiveness theory: foreign firms list shares in the U.S. in order to raise capital at the lowest possible cost to finance growth opportunities and, when those opportunities disappear, a listing becomes less valuable to corporate insiders and they go home if they can. But when they do so, minority shareholders typically lose.

Do International Cross-Listings Still Matter?

In a monotube hydraulic damper containing a volume of gas a guide for the piston-rod is fixed in the upper end of the tube, and a seal for the piston-rod is located between the guide and a support which is fixed in the tube and through which the piston-rod passes with clearance, a reservoir for oil brought up on the surface of the piston-rod being provided between the seal and the support.

Information, Trading Volume and International Stock Market Comovements

With the rapid globalization of financial markets during the 1980s and 1990s, increasingly more firms from around the world began cross-listing their shares on major overseas stock exchanges. During the past decade, however, the number of new international cross-listings on major exchanges around the world has slowed, yet the globalization process has continued to advance. This article asks whether international cross-listings still matter for global capital markets and answers this question by critically reviewing the most recent research on international cross-listings that focuses on multi-market trading, liquidity, and arbitrage. We conclude that cross-listings continue to be vibrant influencing price discovery, trading, and capital-raising for many companies around the world and thus still represent an important force for the integration of global financial markets.

The Consequences of Terrorism for Financial Markets: What Do We Know?

Using intraday prices for the S&P 500 and Nikkei Stock Average stock indexes and aggregate trading volume for the New York and Tokyo Stock Exchanges, we show how short-run comovements between national stock market returns vary over time in a way related to the trading volume and liquidity in those markets. We frame our analysis in the context of the heterogeneous-agent models of trading developed by Campbell, Grossman and Wang (1993) and Blume, Easley and O’Hara (1994) and Wang (1994) which predict that trading volume acts as a signal of the information content of a given price move. While we find that there exists significant short-run dependence in returns and volatility between Japan and the U.S., we offer new evidence that these return “spillovers” are sensitive to interactions with trading volume in those markets. The cross-market effects with volume are revealed in both close-to-open and open-to-close returns and often exhibit non-linear patterns that are not predicted by theory.