Currently the real, inflation-adjusted, price of gold is almost as high as it was in January 1980 and August 2011. Since 1975, periods of high real gold prices have occurred during periods of elevated concern about high future price inflation. Five years after the real price peaks in January...

We analyze expected returns and volatility in 135 different markets. We argue that country credit risk is a proxy for the ex-ante risk exposure of, particularly, segmented developing countries. We fit a time-series cross-sectional regression using data on the 47 countries which have equity...

We explore the cross-sectional determinants of emerging equity market returns. We find that the behavior of emerging market returns differs substantially from the behavior of developed equity market returns and that these differences have persisted in the period ending June 1996. While there are...

Population demographics impact both the time-series and cross-section of expected asset returns. A number of theories link the average age of a population to expected market returns. For example, Bakshi and Chen (1994) argue that an older population will demand a higher premium on equity...

Is there information in the commonly used indicators of country risk for expected global fixed income returns and volatility? We examine the information content in publicly available measures of political, financial and economic risk. We find that these ex-ante measures contain important...

How important is an understanding of country risk for investors? Given the increasingly global nature of investment portfolios, we believe it is very important. Our paper measures the economic content of five different measures of country risk: The International Country Risk Guide is political...