Studies on the Behavior of Equity Markets

Investors, financial analysts and academicians have constantly been exploring new ways to exploit fundamental economic information to out perform the stock market. This study examines the relationship between the economic fundamentals and stock market variables for developed and developing countries. Issues such as predictability, volatility and integration of the equity markets are studied for various countries. Several comparisons are made between the US and emerging stock markets' behavior. The efficiency and integration tests done on the home biased emerging markets explore the potential for portfolio diversification. By exploiting the low correlations in returns between developed and developing countries and within developing countries, the reward to risk ratio of the portfolio can be significantly improved.