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The weak empirical evidence linking diversification and international equity flows calls into question the diversification paradigm at the international level and the analytical framework it implies. Using the concept of Marginal Conditional Stochastic Dominance (MCSD) to estimate the diversification opportunities, this paper reexamines the role that diversification opportunities play in the determination of international equity flows. It provides strong evidence that when diversification opportunities are measured in terms of MCSD, they are significant determinants of international equity flows. Capital flows into dominant markets and flees markets that are dominated. These results are robust with respect to a range of conventional control variables documented in the outstanding literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post and Levy (2005) find that investors are risk averse for losses and risk seekers for gains and that stocks which exhibit low risk in bear markets and high potential for gains in bull markets may demand a premium. The present study examines if this type of risk preference creates a premium in UK stock prices using a third-degree stochastic dominance test. We find that an arbitrage portfolio long on stocks with low past downside risk in bear markets and high past upside potential in bull markets and short on stocks with high past downside risk in bear markets and low past upside potential in bull markets generates a premium of 2.89% per month. This premium cannot be explained by the CAPM or the Fama and French 4-factor model, but it exhibits significant similarities to the momentum premium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine short-term investor reaction to extreme events in the UK equity market for the period 1989 to 2004 and find that the market reaction to shocks for large capitalization stock portfolios is consistent with the Efficient Market Hypothesis, i.e. all information appears to be incorporated in prices on the same day. However, for medium and small capitalization stock portfolios our results indicate significant underreaction to both positive and negative shocks for many days subsequent to a shock. Furthermore, the underreaction is not explained by risk factors (e.g. Fama and French, 1996) calendar effects, bid-ask biases or unique global financial crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically investigates the relationship between equity and credit market development and economic growth, in a sample of five very important 'emerging' markets. In particular, employing a multivariate time-series methodology to test for long-run trends and causality between variables that proxy for stock market development, credit market development and economic development. The results seem to suggest that equity markets have a role to play only in relatively liberalized economies, like Chile and Mexico. In financially repressed economies, like India, the equity market does not affect real sector growth. Furthermore, the banking crises in the 1980s and 1990s in Chile and Mexico resulted in a negative relation between economic growth and the credit market. In South Korea, equity and credit markets both affect economic growth, but not vice versa. In countries where the nature of the stock market has been speculative, like Taiwan, a negative relationship is detected between equity market development and economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]