Sook Ching Kok

Purchasing Power Parity of ASEAN-5 Countries Revisited: Heterogeneity, Structural Breaks and Cross-sectional Dependence

Abstract This paper tests the purchasing power parity (PPP) hypothesis for a collection of ASEAN-5 countries using monthly data spanning the period 1968:1–2009:11. For this purpose, a number of recently developed more powerful panel unit root tests that permit for dependence among the individual countries are employed. In addition to this, we utilize the Lagrange multiplier (LM) cointegration test developed by Westerlund, which is flexible enough to accommodate a large degree of country specific heterogeneity, cross-country dependence as well as multiple structural breaks. The main results derived from this study are: first, our findings from panel unit root tests which do not control for cross-sectional dependence appear to be clearly showing evidence against PPP. Second, the evidence from panel tests controlling for cross-sectional dependence is against PPP over the whole and 1997 pre-financial crisis periods. On the other hand, we find sufficient evidence to support PPP for ASEAN-5 countries over the post-financial crisis period. Third, in stark contrast stand the results obtained from the application of the panel cointegration test provide strong evidence of panel cointegration in whole and sub-periods, providing evidence for PPP; however, these findings have become apparent after allowing for multiple structural breaks as well as for general forms of cross-sectional dependence through bootstrap methods. We provide a detailed description of the breaks identified in the analysis, which appear to be closely associated with some macroeconomic shocks and institutional arrangements. The findings of this study offer important policy implications.

Purchasing power parity in ASEAN-5 countries: revisit with cross-sectional dependence and structural breaks

ABSTRACT This paper re-examines the purchasing power parity (PPP) hypothesis for a panel of ASEAN-5 countries. The panel unit root and cointegration tests, which incorporate cross-sectional dependence and multiple structural breaks, are innovatively used for testing the PPP hypothesis. We could not find evidence that supports the existence of a long-run equilibrium between the relative price ratio and the nominal exchange rate for the whole period. Nevertheless, there is evidence of a cointegrating relationship for the post-crisis period. Our finding implies that a flexible exchange rate regime is suitable for the individual ASEAN countries.

Public debt sustainability and economic growth in Malaysia: Threshold and causality analysis

The 2008 financial crisis has led to an unprecedented increase in public debt across the world, raising serious concerns about its economic impact. This paper investigates the impact of public debt on long-run GDP growth in Malaysia from the year 1970 to 2013. We employ novel methods and diagnostics from the time-series literature, such as threshold regression approach suggested by Hansen (2000), causality test and cointegration test. The empirical results suggest an inverse relationship between debt and GDP growth, controlling for other determinants of growth. Further, our results suggest that there is strong evidence of causality from growth to public debt. In addition, threshold effect and nonlinearity between debt-growth is examined. We found a non-linear impact of public debt on GDP growth with a turning point?beyond which the public debt-to-GDP ratio has a deleterious impact on long-term growth?at about 50-60% of GDP.

Equity market anomalies: concepts, classifi cations, theories and evidence

At the outset, it is important to understand the meaning of ‘anomalies’. In general, anomalies are known as irregularities or deviations from the natural order (George and Elton, 2001). Anomalies that arise from the trading of financial instruments are referred to as the moments when security prices depart from their normal behaviour (Dana and Cristina, 2013). In relation to stock trading specifically, Hubbard (2008) defines anomalies as the trading opportunities derived from the investment strategies that allow for earning above-normal returns.