This paper derives a multibeta representation theorem for pricing assets using arbitrary reference variables that are not necessarily the true factors. Under this theorem, the upper bound on pricing deviations depends upon the correlations not only between the reference variables and the factors...

This paper compares downside risk measures that incorporate higher return moments with traditional risk measures such as standard deviation in predicting hedge fund failure. When controlling for styles, performance, fund age, size, lockup, high-water mark, and leverage, we find that funds with...

Low credit risk firms realize higher returns than high credit risk firms. This effect is puzzling because investors seem to pay a premium for bearing credit risk. This paper shows that the credit risk effect manifests itself due to the poor performance of low-rated stocks during periods of...

The objective of this paper is to review the transmission mechanisms uniting equity market development and economic growth in developing countries. We find that the theoretical impact of equity markets is ambiguous. At the domestic level, the allocation function of equity markets appears...

Academic and practitioner research yields a proliferation of methods using size and value/growth attributes or factors to evaluate portfolio performance. We assess the relative merits of several of the most widely-used procedures, including variants of matched-characteristic benchmark portfolios...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate vulnerability to financial contagion in a set of expanding emerging markets of the Middle East and North Africa, during seven episodes of international financial crisis. Using Fry amp; Baur (2005) fixed-effect panel approach, we significantly reject...

The objective of this paper is to situate the MENA area within the emerging markets universe. We first discuss the various components of market emergence and generate four bootstrapped indexes reflecting market size, market activity, market pricing and transparency. We then draw inter-regional...

We examine the issue of possible portfolio diversification benefits into seven Middle-Eastern and North African (MENA) stock markets. We construct international portfolios in dollars and local currencies. We compute the ex-ante weights by plugging five optimization models and two risk measures...

We investigate the impact of country and sector as variables in explaining the cross-sectional variability of price returns for a sample of over 1900 companies comprising the MSCI Developed World Index, drawn from 21 countries, over the period 1992-2001. For the value-weighted world portfolio,...

The objective of this paper is to study capital market integration in smaller European countries and its implications for an international portfolio investment allocation. A time-varying analysis based on Barari (2004) suggests that the markets have recently started moving towards international...