We explore the relation between international financial integration and the level of entrepreneurial activity in a country. Using a unique firm level data set of approximately 24 million firms in nearly 100 countries in 2004 and 1999, we find suggestive evidence that international financial integration has been associated with higher levels of entrepreneurial activity. Our results are robust to...

We examine the issue of possible portfolio diversification benefits into seven Middle-Eastern and North African (MENA) stock markets. We take the standpoint of the world investor and we construct portfolios in international and local currencies based on five optimization models and two risk measures. We then compare the portfolio out-of-sample performance based on Sharpe and Sortino ratios thro...

We explore the relation between international financial integration and the level of entrepreneurial activity in a country. Using a unique data set of approximately 24 million firms in nearly 100 countries in 1999 and 2004, we find suggestive evidence that international financial integration has been associated with higher levels of entrepreneurial activity. Our results are robust to using vari...

The observed predictability of excess returns in equity and foreign exchange markets has largely been attributed to the presence of time-varying risk premiums in these markets. For example, excess equity returns were found to be explained by various financial and economic variables. Similarly, in the foreign exchange market, the forward rate was found not to be an unbiased predictor of the futu...

This study examines the influence of country and industry factors on the cross-sectional variance and correlation structure of returns. I use new data on emerging markets’ stocks obtained from the Emerging Markets Data Base. I find that emerging markets’ returns are mainly driven by country factors, as it was shown previously in studies for mature markets, and that cross-market correlation is n...

A widely debated issue in recent years is cyber crime. Breaches in security of accessibility, integrity and confidentiality of information involve potentially high explicit and implicit costs for firms. This paper investigates the impact of information security breaches on stock returns. Using event-study methodology, we provide empirical evidence on the effect of announcements of cyber attacks...

The SRI funds performances remain inconclusive. Hence, more studies need to be conducted to determine if SRI funds systematically underperform or outperform conventional funds. This paper has employed dynamic mean-variance model using shortage function approach to evaluate the performance of SRI and Environmentally friendly funds. Unlike the traditional methods, this approach estimate fund perf...

This paper analyses the impact of a transition from open outcry to electronic trading in the UK Long Gilt futures market. Price clustering behaviour is not materially affected, but there is an increased concentration of large trades at more popular prices. After automation, narrower bid-ask spreads tend to be associated with relatively smaller trades. There is a substantial reduction in mean tr...

The observed patterns of equity portfolio allocation around the world are at odds with predictions from a capital asset pricing model (CAPM). What has come to be called the “home-bias” phenomenon is that investors tend to hold a disproportionately large share of their equity portfolio in home country stocks as compared with predictions of the CAPM. This paper provides an explanation of the home...

The downside risk CAPM (DR-CAPM) can price the cross section of currency returns. The market-beta differential between high and low interest rate currencies is higher conditional on bad market returns, when the market price of risk is also high, than it is conditional on good market returns. Correctly accounting for this variation is crucial for the empirical performance of the model. The DR-CA...