By selecting a globally representative dataset of airline indices, this study demonstrates that oil price or oil price regimes (delineated by the first gulf war and the 9/11 terror attacks) alone do not have any significant implications for airline stock prices. Overall, these findings are...

Insider trading has been a topical Issue in recent times. While the debate regarding insider trading usually extends to economic and ethical arguments in favour of or against the practice, in this article we attempt to ascertain the causes of the practice. The origins of insider trading are...

The Monday effect is an anomaly that has defied explanation. It has been found to be present in major stock exchanges around the world. Bhana found evidence in favour of this anomaly in the share returns on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). In this article the Monday effect on the JSE is...

In this article we consider the use of debt by South African firms. There are two possible uses of debt: firstly, it is a method of raising finance and secondly, a method of corporate governance. Within the South African corporate environment it is not clear whether firms would use debt for both...

The aim of this paper is to examine the effect that the increase in integration, culminating in the introduction of the euro currency, had on returns volatility across the different members of the currency union. We analyse the twelve countries that adopted the euro in January 2002, over the...

This paper introduces an alternate measure of idiosyncratic risk leveraged from the decomposition method to further eliminate the residual systematic risk inherent in the factor asset pricing model. Combining both complementary techniques contributes to a more comprehensive firm-level...

Using the panel vector autoregression (VAR) method, this paper documents relationships between investor attention and stock market activities; i.e., return, volatility, and trading volume, respectively. In sum, bidirectional dynamic interdependence of the SVI-stock market activities relationship...

We present an analysis of the determinants of Asia-Pacific banks' extent of derivative activities. Our findings suggest that the probability of financial distress and economies of scale arguments are important in this regard. Further analyses reveal that Asia-Pacific dealer banks tend to use...

This paper examines the sensitivity of financial sector stock returns to two risk factors – interest rates (both long-term and short-term) and exchange rates. Specifically we investigate the impact of the European Union and the introduction of the euro on European financial sector risk in the...

"Alpha" has symbolic importance on the investments side of finance. That is, a fundamental pillar of modern finance theory is the risk-return relation, and traditionally alpha is taken to represent the degree of "mispricing" in asset returns. But, such an interpretation is not always appropriate...