The Fundamental Determinants of International Financial Markets
Paper Session
Sunday, Jan. 3, 2021 12:15 PM - 2:15 PM (EST)
- Chair: Wenxin Du, University of Chicago
Which Investors Matter for Equity Valuations and Expected Returns?
Abstract
Much work in finance is devoted to identifying characteristics of firms, such as measures of fundamentals and beliefs, that explain differences in asset prices and expected returns. We develop a framework to quantitatively trace the connection between valuations, expected returns, and characteristics back to institutional investors and households. We use it to analyze (i) what information is important to investors in forming their demand beyond prices and (ii) what is the relative importance of different investors—differentiated by type, size, and active share—in the price formation process. We first show that a small set of characteristics explains the majority of variation in a panel of firm-level valuation ratios across countries. We then estimate an asset demand system using investor-level holdings data, allowing for flexible substitution patterns within and across countries. We find that hedge funds and small, active investment advisors are most influential per dollar of assets under management, while long-term investors, such as pension funds and insurance companies are least influential. In terms of pricing characteristics, small, active investment advisors are most important for the pricing of payout policy, cash flows, and the fraction of sales sold abroad. Large, passive investment advisors are most influential in pricing the Lerner index, a measure of markups, and hedge funds for the CAPM beta.Variance Risk Premium Components and International Stock Return Predictability
Abstract
We examine the commonality in international equity risk premiums by linking empirical evidence for the international stock return predictability of US downside and upside variance risk premiums (DVP and UVP, respectively) with model implications from a no-arbitrage asset pricing framework. Our framework takes the perspective of a US/global investor and features heteroskedastic and asymmetric global macroeconomic, financial market(illiquidity), and risk aversion shocks. We find that acknowledging for asymmetric variance risk premium components significantly improves the international stock return predictability, especially at horizons between one and seven months. Gains in predictability come from the fact that DVP and UVP predict through different global equity risk premium determinants--bad and good macroeconomic uncertainties, respectively--and global macroeconomic risk may explain up to 80% of the short-horizon global equity risk compensation. Moreover, US investors demand lower global macroeconomic risk compensation but higher global pure financial market risk compensation for countries with higher global integration.A Credit-Based Theory of the Currency Risk Premium
Abstract
This paper extends Kremens and Martin (2019) and uncovers a novel component for exchange rate predictability —the credit-implied risk premium (CRP) —based on the price difference between sovereign credit default swaps denominated in different currencies. We show that currency returns compensate investors for the expected currency depreciation conditional on a severe but rare credit event. Using data for 17 Eurozone countries, we find that CRP positively forecasts the euro-dollar exchange rate return between one-week and six-month horizon, both in-sample and out-of-sample. We also show that currency trading strategies that exploit the informative content of CRP generate substantial out-of-sample economic value.Discussant(s)
Andrea Vedolin
,
Boston University
Andreas Stathopoulos
,
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Mete Kilic
,
University of Southern California
Tarek Alexander Hassan
,
Boston University
JEL Classifications
- G1 - Asset Markets and Pricing
- F3 - International Finance