A Model of Asset Pricing under Country Risk

This chapter investigates whether macroeconomic and data transparency standards lead to lower borrowing costs in sovereign bond markets. We essentially show that emerging market countries which subscribed to the Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS) experienced a significant decline in borrowing cost proxied by sovereign yield spreads on secondary markets. However, the adherence of these markets to the Code of Good Practices on Transparency in Monetary and Financial Policies caused a significant increase in the yield spreads. There is no impact of the adherence to the Code of Good Practices in Fiscal Transparency on the changes of sovereign spreads. In addition, the results suggest that a debtor country's internal liquidity factor (measured by the total reserves to total external debt service ratio) and external liquidity conditions (measured by the yield on US long-term bond) are the most important determinants of emerging market spreads.

This chapter firstly provides a comprehensive review the modern portfolio theory bases including, in particular, investor’s choice, portfolio diversification, and the market model. Then, two most widely used asset pricing models, the CAPM and the APT, are presented. Several empirical tests of these models are also discussed as they are difficult to test and to use in practice. Finally, we expose some problems associated with the application of asset pricing models to emerging market returns. Indeed, emerging markets are at least partially segmented, and emerging asset returns are highly non-normal. Furthermore, emerging markets present other sources of risk: information asymmetries, liquidity, country risk, etc.

Identifying the effects of an exchange rate depreciation on country risk: Evidence from a natural experiment

This paper assesses the effect of fiscal rules on sovereign bond spreads over the short and medium term, for 34 advanced countries and 19 emerging market economies, over the period 1980–2016. Our results, based on impulse response functions, show that the dynamic impact of fiscal rules on sovereign yield spreads is negative and statistically significant, at around 1.2–1.8 percentage points, implying lower government borrowing costs. This result stems essentially from the advanced economies subsample. We also find that more fiscally responsible countries are the ones for which a fiscal rule reduces the government's borrowing costs. Moreover, in times of recession, a fiscal rule leads financial markets to reduce the risk premiums on government bonds. Finally, when it comes to design features of fiscal rules, independent monitoring of compliance to the rule, done outside government, also reduces sovereign spreads.

This paper represents an extension and integration of recent empirical and theoretical research on default risk and taxability. The purpose of the paper is to develop and test a model of interest rate spreads which incorporates both the effect of taxes and differences in default probabilities in a theoretically correct manner. There is an important fundamental difference between our approach to explaining yield spreads and the approach most commonly taken in literature. Unlike nearly all of the previous work, we do not begin with a yield spread model, i.e., one which begins by examining differences in yields, but rather begin with an expected return or pricing model, which can then be expressed in the yield spread format. This is a fundamental difference in approaches which we feel leads to a superior theoretical formulation which can then be tested empirically without many of the problems inherent in the alter- native approach. The theoretical model is a simple extension of earlier work on default by While there is a considerable literature that analyzes the effect of taxability on rate spreads, we are unaware of any previous study that considers tax conse- quences in the event of default, a rather surprising omission.

Do depositors care about enforcement actions?

This paper quantifies the impact of changes in U.S. monetary policy on sovereign bond spreads in emerging market countries. Specifically, the paper explores empirically how country risk, as proxied by sovereign bond spreads, is influenced by U.S. monetary policy, country-specific fundamentals, and conditions in global capital markets. While country-specific fundamentals are important in explaining fluctuations in country risk, the stance and predictability of U.S. monetary policy are also important for stabilizing capital flows and capital market conditions in emerging markets. Copyright 2002, International Monetary Fund

Cornerstone asset pricing models, such as capital asset pricing model (CAPM) and arbitrage pricing theory (APT), yield theoretical predictions about the relationship between expected returns and exposure to systematic risk, as measured by beta(s). Numerous studies have investigated the empirical validity of these models. We show that even if no relationship holds between true expected returns and betas in the population, the existence of low-probability extreme outcomes induces a spurious correlation between the sample means and the sample betas. Moreover, the magnitude of this purely spurious correlation is similar to the empirically documented correlation, and the regression slopes and intercepts are very similar as well. This result does not necessarily constitute evidence against the theoretical asset pricing models, but it does shed new light on previous empirical results, and it points to an issue that should be carefully considered in the empirical testing of these models. The analysis points to the dangers of relying on simple least squares regression for drawing conclusions about the validity of equilibrium pricing models.

In a competitive market, what should the rate of return on insurance companies’ equity be? What premiums should insurance companies charge? Traditionally, the answers to these questions have been based on actuarial and accounting concepts.1 More recently financial models of the insurance firm have been developed. Ferrari (1968) suggested a descriptive model which allowed an algebraic expression for the rate of return on equity as a function of the premiums charged to be derived. Combining this with the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) meant that an equilibrium value for the return on equity and the corresponding level of premiums could be found. This model is known as the insurance CAPM.2 The development of other asset pricing models in finance has also led to insurance counterparts. Thus the Arbitrage Pricing Theory, and option pricing models have been used to derive the return on equity and the level of premiums.3 Although the approaches based on asset pricing models have advantages compared to those based on traditional actuarial and accounting concepts, they are not ideal. One of the most important problems is that they are not well suited for finding premiums when an insurance company has multiple divisions. The difficulty is that it is not clear how earnings on reserves should be allocated among the various divisions of the firm.

This paper provides an introduction to asset pricing theory and its applications in non-life insurance. The first part of the paper presents a basic review of asset pricing models, including discrete and continuous time capital asset pricing models (the CAPM and ICAPM), arbitrage pricing theory (APT), and option pricing theory (OPT). The second part discusses applications in non-life insurance. Among the insurance models reviewed are the insurance CAPM, discrete time discounted cash flow models, option pricing models, and more general continuous time models. The paper concludes that the integration of actuarial and financial theory can provide major advances in insurance pricing and financial management.

Under the assumption of rational economic man, traditional financial theory constructs a perfect theoretical system through general equilibrium analysis and arbitrage-free equilibrium analysis. Generally speaking, when the investor's mood is high, the subsequent market yield will decrease, whereas when the mood is low, the market yield will increase. As far as the option model is concerned, the option pricing model gives the option price and five basic parameters. As investors cannot obtain all the information, it is impossible to analyze all the information and cannot handle complicated judgments. Based on this article, this paper analyzes investor behavior and stock market reporting volatility based on asset pricing model.

This is an empirical analysis of study simultaneously focus on examining the impact of macroeconomic variables, i.e., GDP growth, GDP per capita, inflation, foreign direct investment, exports, imports, interest rates, foreign debt and foreign reserves on the exchange rate regimes, using the sample of five countries from MSCI developed markets index, emerging markets index and frontier markets index each from 1970 to 2020. This study predicts and provides several essential contributions for markets, financial and economic, that fills the gaps in the markets economic and financial literacy of desired countries. The study identifies and evaluates the impact using the most advanced statistical frameworks. This study adopts ML—binary logit (quadratic hill climbing) and investigates the change in the exchange rate regimes due to macroeconomic variables. The empirical results confirm that Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand and Singapore markets take timely correct exchange rate regimes decisions, which lead to developed markets. As emerging markets and frontier markets never adopt the exchange rate regimes three, four, and six, which is a significant impact factor that affects those markets never growth according develops markets. Foreign debts, inflation and foreign reserves are severe challenges for emerging and frontier markets.

Quantile clocks are defined as convolutions of subordinators $L$, with quantile functions of positive random variables. We show that quantile clocks can be chosen to be strictly increasing and continuous and discuss their practical modeling advantages as business activity times in models for asset prices. We show that the marginal distributions of a quantile clock, at each fixed time, equate with the marginal distribution of a single subordinator. Moreover, we show that there are many quantile clocks where one can specify $L$, such that their marginal distributions have a desired law in the class of generalized $s$-self decomposable distributions, and in particular the class of self-decomposable distributions. The development of these results involves elements of distribution theory for specific classes of infinitely divisible random variables and also decompositions of a gamma subordinator, that is of independent interest. As applications, we construct many price models that have continuous trajectories, exhibit volatility clustering and have marginal distributions that are equivalent to those of quite general exponential L\'{e}vy price models. In particular, we provide explicit details for continuous processes whose marginals equate with the popular VG, CGMY and NIG price models. We also show how to perfectly sample the marginal distributions of more general classes of convoluted subordinators when $L$ is in a sub-class of generalized gamma convolutions, which is relevant for pricing of European style options.

The paper discusses efficiency tests of two popular asset pricing models; Sharpe-Lintner (CAPM) and Fama-French 3 factor model using banking stock data at the Nairobi Securities Exchange.The purpose is to propose a more efficient model between the two based on end year returns for 10 banks over the study period 2010-2015.Design: Comparative analysis: Fitting data on stock returns, market returns, size and value factors to the two asset pricing models to find their statistical power measured by R 2 and significance of the coefficient alpha.Results: Fama-French 3 factor model has better fit (R 2 =77.5%) compared to CAPM (R 2 =57%) when the bank stock data is analysed and fitted into the two models.However value factor is irrelevant in the 3 factor model.The coefficient alpha is observed not to be different from zero signifying better efficiency for the FF model.Stock return is positively related with market risk(r=0.775,p=0.000) but negatively associated with size (r= -0.841, p=000). Originality:The paper makes unique contribution by validating asset pricing models using bank stock prices at the Nairobi Securities Exchange.It uses end year stock data (low frequency) which can then be compared with higher frequency data models.Lastly a shortened version of Fama-French (1993) is proposed for pricing bank stocks that captures only market risk and size effects as explanatory factors at the NSE.

We show that the external habit‐formation model economy of Campbell and Cochrane (1999) can explain why the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) and its extensions are betterapproximate asset pricing models than is the standard onsumption‐based model. The model economy produces time‐varying expected eturns, tracked by the dividend–price ratio. Portfolio‐based models capture some of this variation in state variables, which a state‐independent function of consumption cannot capture. Therefore, though the consumption‐based model and CAPM are both perfect conditional asset pricing models, the portfolio‐based models are better approximate unconditional asset pricing models.