Purpose – The objective of this paper is to explore the sensitivity of industry-specific stock returns to monetary policy and macroeconomic news. The paper looks at a range of industry-specific South African stock market indices and evaluates the sensitivity of these indices to various...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to focus on the empirical dimension of financial integration among the five newest members of the European Monetary Union (Cyprus, Estonia, Malta, Slovakia and Slovenia) and the euro area. The main objective is to study the level and the speed of...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the relationship between firms' inventory accumulation and financial structure. It further investigates the impact of geographical locations on firms' inventory investment decision after controlling for firms' financial structure....

Purpose – This paper aims to test the finite sample properties of the automatic variance ratio (AVR) test and suggest suitable measure to improve its small sample properties under conditional heteroskedasticity and apply it to test the martingale hypothesis in the stock prices of the Portugal,...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to find and describe some stylized facts for foreign exchange and stock market returns, which are explored using statistical methods. Design/methodology/approach – Formal statistics for testing presence of autocorrelation, asymmetry, and other...

Purpose – This paper aims to examine the controversial issue of the extent to which Federal Reserve monetary policy may have contributed to the recent housing crisis and subsequent adverse macroeconomic developments. Design/methodology/approach – The authors develop a small model that...

Purpose – Model the drivers of Australian housing affordability and forecast equilibrium affordability. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – Uses autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to model housing affordability measured by the Housing Industry...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of leverage mimicking factor portfolios in explaining stock return variations. This paper broadens the focus of the current asset pricing literature by forming portfolios mimicking the leverage factor. Design/methodology/approach –...

Purpose – The current paper contributes to the vigorous debate about policies and regulations that would shield financial markets' participants from future events of the financial turmoil. In doing so, the paper aims to broaden the picture of the financial crisis contagion and set it against...