The paper concentrates on value and size effects in country portfolios. It contributes to academic literature threefold. First, I provide fresh evidence that the value and size effects may be useful in explaining the cross-sectional variation in country returns. The computations are based on a...

We exploit the merger between BlackRock and Barclays Global Investors to study how changes in expected ownership concentration affect the investment behavior of funds and the cross-section of stocks worldwide. We find that funds with open-end structures and a large exposure to commonly-held...

We examine insider trades around the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Insiders purchased shares in record numbers after the stock market decline that began in late February 2020. We find that insider purchases were more pronounced for larger firms, value firms, firms with high levels of leverage...

This paper hypothesizes that the number of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases significantly influence the stock returns in international financial markets. Our empirical evidence, based on panel Granger non-causality tests, strongly supports this hypothesis for Group of Seven (G7)...

We provide evidence for a causal link between the US economy and the global financial cycle. Using a unique intraday dataset, we show that US macroeconomic news releases have large and significant effects on global risky asset prices. Stock price indexes of 27 countries, commodity prices, and...