We study different channels through which well-known benchmark indexes impact asset allocations, capital flows, and asset prices across countries, using unique monthly micro-level data of benchmark compositions and mutual fund investments during 1996-2014. Benchmarks are useful for...

We examine the response of equity mutual fund flows to sovereign rating changes in a wide sample of countries during the crisis prone years from 1996-2002. We find that Sovereign downgrades are strongly associated with outflows of capital from the downgraded country while improvements in a...

Considerable attention has been devoted in the financial literature to excessive portfolio concentrations in domestic risky assets relative to those predicted by standard finance models-generally identified as"home bias"-across international markets. The innovation we offer is ascribing home...

If transitory profitable trading opportunities exist, filter rules are used to mitigate transaction costs. We use a dynamic programming framework to design an optimal filter which maximizes after-cost expected returns. The filter size depends crucially on the degree of persistence of trading...

The relationship between asset prices and fundamentals is characterized by both disconnect and predictability: asset prices are largely disconnected from current publicly observed fundamentals and at the same time contain information about future fundamentals, even when conditioning on current...

This paper estimates switching autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (SWARCH) time series models for weekly returns of nine Asian forward exchange rates. We find two regimes with different volatility levels, whereby each regime displays considerable persistence. Our analysis provides...

We study trade integration among 15 selected Asian and Oceanic economies using factor models. The principal component approach is employed to extract the common factor that drives trade integration from bilateral trade integration series. It is found that the estimated common trade integration...

Developing countries are rapidly emerging as new and important sources of foreign direct investment (FDI) to other developing countries. While Asian companies have become significant foreign direct investors abroad, a large share of outward investments from Asia appears to have been recycled...

We investigate the empirical determinants of China¡¦s outward direct investment (ODI). It is found that China¡¦s investments in developed and developing countries are driven by different sets of factors. Subject to the differences between developed and developing countries, there is evidence...

To play the role of a unit of account, an international currency must be a currency widely used to invoice international trade. This paper investigates the determinants of the use of currency in trade invoicing and evaluates the potential of the renminbi for the denomination of cross-border...