The efficient-market hypothesis (EMH) is one of the most important economic and financial hypotheses that have been tested over the past century. Due to many abnormal phenomena and conflicting evidence, otherwise known as anomalies against EMH, some academics have questioned whether EMH is...

The Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 (JGTRRA) essentially halved the tax rate on dividends and reduced the top tax rate on capital gains. This paper explores the likely effect of JGTRRA on the composition of returns on corporations' common stock. Both larger corporations'...

This paper explores how equity market volatility are related with the Index of Economic Freedom for 22 emerging countries over 1995-2010 by considering the impacts of financial crisis. Consistent with theory, we find the overall economic freedom index and it components exert significant impacts...

The dividend payout problem in literature has largely been misspecified. The roles of dividends as signals, agency cost reducers, fixed income providers or even the invariance of dividend payouts are all phenomenon that, based on market conditions, follow from the role of dividends as equalizers...

In this paper, we investigate the impact of trade and financial liberalization on the degree of stock market co-movement among emerging economies. Using a sample of 25 developing countries observed over 15 years, we estimate the impact of reforms which aim at opening these countries to trade and...

After a long period of loose monetary policy triggered by the Great Recession, some central banks are signaling that they will raise their policy rates soon. Previous research, for example, Bernanke and Kuttner (2005) and Ozdagli (2014), has shown that asset prices react more strongly to...

In this paper, we use a modified concept of Granger-(non)causality in reconsidering the negative correlation between stock returns and inflation known in the literature as stock return-inflation puzzle. Based on the quarterly data for Germany including stock returns, inflation rates and growth...

In a production economy with trade in financial markets motivated by the desire to share labor-income risk and to speculate, we show that speculation increases volatility of asset returns and investment growth, increases the equity risk premium, and reduces welfare. Regulatory measures, such as...

We study the effects of crude oil price shocks on the stock market volatility of the G7 economies. We rely on a structural VAR model to identify the causes underlying the oil price shocks and gauge the differential impact that oil supply and oil demand innovations have on financial volatility....

Stock markets perform a creation function if the inflow of financial capital in the birth of new privately-held firms is stimulated by the promise of stock market liquidity at a later point in time. Junior stock market segments, characterized by lighter listing procedures and costs, may be...