Lidija Dedi

Capital Budgeting Practices: A Survey of Croatian Firms

Capital Budgeting Practices: A Survey of Croatian Firms This paper reports the results of a mail survey of capital budgeting practices among Croatian firms and compares the results with those from similar studies in the USA, UK, Sweden, and other European countries. It is based on a questionnaire sent to 200 firms selected from 400 of the best Croatian firms (special edition of Privredni vjesnik) and to 34 banks from a ranking of Croatian banks (special edition of Privredni vjesnik). The response rate was 25,21%. The goal of the empirical survey was to determine the present application of quantitative capital budgeting methods, cost of capital and cash flow estimation, risk analysis and application of a real options approach in capital budgeting practices in Croatian firms. This is the first empirical survey of Croatian capital budgeting practices that has been undertaken.

Return and volatility spillovers in equity markets: An investigation using various GARCH methodologies

Abstract This paper investigates linkages among equity market returns and volatility spillovers in the following countries: Germany, United Kingdom, China, Russia, and Turkey. MARMA, GARCH, GARCH-in-mean, and exponential GARCH (EGARCH) methodologies are applied to daily data on country exchange-traded funds (ETF) based on the MSCI indices from 31 March 2011 to 11 March 2016. The results of the analysis show the existence of significant co-movements of returns among the countries in the sample. ETF returns in Germany, UK, and Russia affect returns in all of the other sample countries. Implications of these findings are explored in terms of portfolio diversification. In addition, the highest volatilities are exhibited by Russia and Turkey. On the other hand, the UK and the Chinese markets have the lowest volatilities. Also, there is a strong evidence of volatility spillovers. All of the countries in the sample, with the exception of UK and Turkey, experience volatility spillovers from other markets. Finally, because of the risk-return trade-off, we analyzed the effect of volatility of the market on its returns and found that only in the UK volatility of the market had a positive effect on its future returns: that an increase in volatility leads to a rise in future ETF returns in the UK.

Equity Returns and Volatilities Before and After the 2007-08 Financial Crisis

Abstract This paper investigates the linkages among equity markets of four European countries (Germany, France, Italy, UK) and the USA in terms of market returns and transmission of volatilities. We use daily exchange traded funds (ETF) data from January 2002 to March 2016 and utilize both a Multivariate Autoregressive Moving Average model (MARMA) and a Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity model (GARCH). We divided the data into three separate periods: before the 2007-08 financial crisis, during the crisis and after the crisis. The results show the existence of significant co-movement of returns in all three selected periods although some important differences before and after the financial crisis are noted. Findings also include marked increases in integration of the markets and thus diminishing diversification opportunities for investors. Volatilities appear to react strongly to market movements and their shocks fade away slowly in all five countries during the crisis period. There is also strong evidence of volatility spillovers particularly during and after the crisis periods.