George Filis

Tourism income and economic growth in Greece: empirical evidence from their cyclical components.

This paper examines the relationship between the cyclical components of Greek GDP and international tourism income for Greece for the period 1976–2004. Using spectral analysis the authors find that cyclical fluctuations of GDP have a length of about nine years and that international tourism income has a cycle of about seven years. The volatility of tourism income is more than eight times the volatility of the Greek GDP cycle. VAR analysis shows that the cyclical component of tourism income is significantly influencing the cyclical component of GDP in Greece. The findings support the tourism-led economic growth hypothesis and are of particular interest and importance to policy makers, financial analysts and investors dealing with the Greek tourism industry.

OIL PRICES AND STOCK MARKET CORRELATION: A TIME-VARYING APPROACH

This paper examines the influence of oil prices on stock market time-varying correlation. Five stock market indices from both oil-importing (US, UK and Germany) and oil-exporting economies (Canada and Norway) are considered for the period 1988-2011. The findings from the DCC-GARCH framework suggest that the effects of oil price changes on stock market correlation are not constant over time and they depend on the status of the economy, i.e. whether it is oil-importing or oil-exporting. In addition, utilising the identification of oil price shocks in [1], [2] and [3] it is found that the aggregate demand shocks and precautionary demand shocks tend to exercise a negative effect on stock market correlation, whereas no effects from the supply-side oil price shocks can be reported. These findings have important implications for international portfolio diversifications and risk management.

Testing for market efficiency in emerging markets: evidence from the Athens Stock Exchange

The purpose of this study is to test the efficiency level of the Athens Stock Exchange (ASE). It performs efficiency tests for the years 2000–2002. The results of these tests enable us to argue that over the two years of the study, ASE was not an efficient market as it suffered from volatility clustering. However, the FTSE/ASE 20 index showed evidence of weak form efficiency as it followed a random walk pattern.

Time-varying co-movements between stock market returns and oil price shocks

This paper investigates the time-varying co-movements between stock market returns and oil price shocks, for both oil-importing and oil-exporting countries. To achieve this, we use data from 1998 until 2013 and employ a Scalar-BEKK model. Our findings are as follows: (i) the correlation between oil price shocks and index returns are showing some differences depending on whether a country is oil-importer or oil-exporter, (ii) the correlations are industry-specific and shock-specific, (iii) the aggregate demand shocks generate moderate positive correlations with stock market returns until 2011, (iv) stock market index returns have low to zero correlation with the supply-side shocks and (v) oil specific demand shocks have a moderate positive correlation with all indices in the post-2006 period. Our results have important implication for investor, as well as, policy makers.

The Effect of Sport Sponsorship Programs of Various Sport Events on Stock Price Behavior During a Sport Event

This paper examines sporting events spillover effect to investors behavior through event study analysis using the GARCH (p,q) model, focusing on the stock price effects of a sport sponsorship program during and after a sporting event. Studying stock price behavior during a sporting event is attempted for the first time in the marketing and sponsorship literature. First, we provide some summary points from the review of 40 research works and interpretive claims, based on a conceptual and theoretical framework. Second, we consider daily stock returns of 28 listed companies that have sponsored 15 major sports events during the period 2000–2009, in order to examine the effect of major sporting events on sponsors’ stock returns and volatility. The three research hypotheses are supported. Research results show that stock returns and volatility changed significantly during and after the sporting event compared to pre-event period. Results show that stock price effects caused by sports events’ sponsorship programs are firm-specific, as well as sporting event-specific. The findings of this study are of high value for promotion managers as it allows them to become more critically aware of the practical wisdom of sporting events.

An Analysis between Implied and Realised Volatility in the Greek Derivative Market

In this article, we examine the relationship between implied and realised volatility in the Greek derivative market. We examine the differences between realised volatility and implied volatility of call and put options for at-the-money index options with a two-month expiration period. The findings provide evidence that implied volatility is not an efficient estimate of realised volatility. Implied volatility creates overpricing, for both call and put options, in the Greek market. This is an indication of inefficiency for the market. In addition, we find evidence that realised volatility ‘Granger causes’ implied volatility for call options, and implied volatility of call options ‘Granger causes’, the implied volatility of put options.

Forecasting tourist arrivals using origin country macroeconomics

ABSTRACT This study utilizes both disaggregated data and macroeconomic indicators in order to examine the importance of the macroeconomic environment of origin countries for analysing destinations’ tourist arrivals. In particular, it is the first study to present strong empirical evidence that both of these features in tandem provide statistically significant information of tourist arrivals in Greece. The forecasting exercises presented in our analysis show that macroeconomic indicators conducive to better forecasts are mainly origin country-specific, thus highlighting the importance of considering the apparent sharp national contrasts among origin countries when investigating domestic tourist arrivals. Given the extent of the dependency of the Greek economy on tourism income and also the perishable nature of the tourist product itself, results have important implications for policymakers in Greece.

Option listing, returns and volatility: evidence from Greece

This study examines the effect of the first introduction of Greek stock options (Greek Telecommunication Organisation, Intracom, National Bank of Greece and Alpha Bank) on stock prices and volatility for the period 1999 to 2002. We examine the asymmetric information hypothesis using a standard event study methodology and asymmetric Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (GARCH) type models. Event study results indicate that abnormal returns existed in the prelisting period, but tend to disappear in the post listing period. Asymmetric component Threshold Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (TGARCH) models with Generalized Error Distribution (GED) show that the introduction of stock options has led to increased volatility (positive effect) for Greek Telecommunication Organisation, Intracom and National Bank of Greece only (Alpha Bank shows a positive but insignificant effect). We argue that our results provide support to the asymmetric information hypothesis, suggesting that the Greek market has become more efficient after the introduction of stock options.

The tourism and economic growth enigma: Examining an ambiguous relationship through multiple prisms

This article revisits the ambiguous relationship between tourism and economic growth, providing a comprehensive study of destinations across the globe which takes into account the key dynamics that influence tourism and economic performance. We focus on 113 countries over the period 1995 to 2014, clustered, for the first time, around six criteria that reflect their economic, political, and tourism dimensions. A panel vector autoregressive model is employed, which, in contrast to previous studies, allows the data to reveal any tourism-economy interdependencies across these clusters, without imposing a priori the direction of causality. Overall, the economic-driven tourism growth hypothesis seems to prevail in countries which are developing, nondemocratic, highly bureaucratic and have low tourism specialization. Conversely, bidirectional relationships are established for economies that are stronger, democratic and with higher levels of government effectiveness. Thus, depending on the economic, political, and tourism status of a destination, different policy implications apply.

Investments and uncertainty revisited: the case of the US economy

ABSTRACT This article examines the relationship between investments and uncertainty for the US economy, as the latter is approximated by consumer sentiment, purchasing managers’ prospects and economic policy uncertainty. Contrary to the existing literature, we provide evidence that this relationship is time varying. The time variation is attributed to the observed temporal replacement effect between private and public investments. Furthermore, we show that there are two distinct correlation regimes in this relationship and unless we concentrate on them, we cannot fully unravel the real link between uncertainty and investments. Finally, we examine whether the use of the two correlation regimes provides better forecasts for investments compared to the use of the uncertainty indices alone. The forecasting exercise reveals that the use of correlation regimes provides statistically superior out-of-sample forecasts.