Essays on contagion and firms' internationalization in emerging markets

Chapter 1. Investors induced contagion in Latin America: Evidence from international stocks . The paper empirically investigates the theory of investor induced contagion during the 1994 Mexican crisis and the 1998 Brazilian crisis. We use firm-level data on domestic stocks of companies in Chile, Mexico; and Brazil that issued American Depository Receipts (ADRs) or cross-listed in the U.S., and stocks of purely domestic: companies. Our results show evidence of contagion of the Brazilian crisis to some international stocks from Chile and Mexico. In contrast, purely domestic stocks experience a mere continuation of the pre-crisis correlation or interdependence. There is however no evidence of contagion during the Mexican crisis. We find that firms affected by contagion belong to specific industries. Furthermore, liquidity seems to matter more than size for those firms. The results suggest that with the globalization of equity markets international investors can spread emerging market crises through portfolio rebalancing, or herding. Chapter 2. A model of contagion and firms' internationalization . We investigate whether emerging market firms that cross-list in developed exchanges are more affected by financial contagion than pure domestic firms. We develop a model where contagion spreads from one emerging market to another through the actions of international investors trading cross-listed stocks. We find that international stocks are more affected by contagion than pure domestic stocks. However, a welfare analysis of financial autarky versus international cross-listing suggests that with internationalization, the costs of contagion are offset by less information asymmetry and better market efficiency. Overall, investors are better off when emerging market firms cross-list their stocks abroad regardless of contagion.