Does Co-Movement of Conditional Volatility Matter in Asset Pricing? Further Evidence in the Downside and Conventional Pricing Frameworks

In this paper we model country-specific equity market return and association between country-specific equity market volatility and that of the world market in the downside and conventional asset pricing frameworks. For this a Factor- ARCH type process is adopted where world market risk (beta) is estimated in the mean equation and exposure of country-specific market volatility to world market volatility (volatility beta) is estimated in the variance equation. Generally, the beta is estimated higher for developed markets than for emerging markets and the reverse is observed in volatility beta. Even though the two types of betas are positive and significant, a cross-sectional analysis reveals that volatility beta is not priced. We observe these results when the analysis is carried out from an international investor perspective. When we repeat the analysis in sub-periods delineated via breakpoints in the world market return series and with alternative specifications of the variance equation our findings remain largely unchanged