Jose E. Gomez-Gonzalez , Jorge M. Uribe , Oscar M. Valencia , Bum Kim
{"title":"Doom loops in Latin America","authors":"Jose E. Gomez-Gonzalez , Jorge M. Uribe , Oscar M. Valencia , Bum Kim","doi":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101334","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101334","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The post-COVID surge in public debt has intensified the financial interdependence between sovereigns and banks in emerging market economies, where domestic financial institutions have increasingly financed government borrowing. This paper examines the interaction between sovereign and banking sector risk through two complementary empirical strategies. First, using daily data from 2005 to 2023 for Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru, we estimate risk spillovers between sovereign CDS spreads and bank stock returns at different points of the distribution. We find that spillovers are economically significant—particularly in the tails—and that two-way risk transmission persists regardless of banks' exposure to sovereign debt. Second, drawing on panel data for 111 banks across 30 countries, we study how changes in sovereign risk affect the downside market risk of banks, measured as the 5th percentile of their daily stock return distribution. Results from dynamic panel regressions reveal a strong and robust link between sovereign and bank downside risk, driven primarily by common macroeconomic shocks rather than by endogenous fragility loops. Notably, at low levels of market stress, moderate exposure to sovereign debt appears to reduce downside risk for banks. These findings underscore the importance of sound regulatory frameworks for sovereign exposure and credible fiscal policies in maintaining financial stability, particularly in emerging market contexts.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47886,"journal":{"name":"Emerging Markets Review","volume":"68 ","pages":"Article 101334"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2025-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144535746","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The perils of popularity: Retail investor attention and misguided M&As","authors":"Weiping Li , Hanfang Zhang , Jingjing Xia","doi":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101335","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101335","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Although the impact of retail investor attention on stock market dynamics has been widely studied, its influence on firm-level strategic decisions, such as mergers and acquisitions (M&As), remains largely unexplored. This study investigates the relationship between retail attention and M&A activity using a sample of Chinese A-share listed firms from 2011 to 2022. We find that heightened retail attention can lead to CEO overconfidence due to the self-attribution bias, which in turn results in increased M&A activity. However, these attention-driven acquisitions often prove to be value-destroying, consistent with evidence in prior research that overconfident CEOs tend to make imprudent investment decisions. Furthermore, the positive association between retail attention and M&A is more pronounced in firms facing higher uncertainty but is attenuated in firms subject to stronger external monitoring. These findings underscore the substantial, yet often overlooked, impact of retail investors on corporate strategic decision-making.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47886,"journal":{"name":"Emerging Markets Review","volume":"68 ","pages":"Article 101335"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2025-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144549476","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From the core to the European periphery: Spillover effects of financial cycles","authors":"Lukáš Jursa , Jan Janků","doi":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101305","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101305","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We construct a comprehensive Financial Cycle Index (FCI), combining credit, credit-to-GDP, house prices, and equity prices, to examine how negative financial shocks from the Euro Area (EA) and the United States (US) transmit to peripheral European economies. Using a Bayesian Global Vector Autoregression (BGVAR) model with stochastic volatility, we find that EA shocks exert stronger effects on inflation and output, underscoring tight regional linkages. In contrast, US shocks drive more persistent declines in short-term interest rates and sharper increases in term premiums, especially in smaller open economies. Replacing the FCI with the Country-Level Index of Financial Stress (CLIFS) reveals faster, more volatile financial-cycle responses in the periphery, but with weaker and shorter-lived real-sector effects, highlighting the role of acute financial stress versus longer-term credit and asset-price dynamics. These core-to-periphery spillovers persist under de facto floating exchange rates and remain robust to macroprudential-policy controls and alternative model specifications.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47886,"journal":{"name":"Emerging Markets Review","volume":"68 ","pages":"Article 101305"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2025-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144549473","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Kuwait Stock Exchange: A re-examination of seasonal anomalies","authors":"Humoud Alsabah , Khaled Alsabah","doi":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101317","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101317","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study examines seasonal anomalies in Kuwait’s stock exchange market from 2012 to 2023, following the establishment of the Capital Markets Authority. Our findings reveal significant shifts in established patterns. Notably, we observe higher returns on the third and fourth trading days of the week and a substantial increase in January returns. This research contributes to understanding market behavior, emphasizing the impact of regulatory changes and market evolution on trading patterns. Additionally, our findings provide actionable insights for fund managers and investors, suggesting that aligning investment strategies with these new patterns could lead to optimized returns.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47886,"journal":{"name":"Emerging Markets Review","volume":"68 ","pages":"Article 101317"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2025-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144517006","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Does firms' commitment towards CSR influence idiosyncratic volatility? Evidence from India","authors":"Neeru Chaudhry, Priya Dhawan","doi":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101331","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101331","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Inconclusive evidence on how CSR affects idiosyncratic volatility (<em>IVOL</em>) is potentially because of different approaches used to measure firms' CSR performance. We use the actual amount spent on CSR activities to measure firms' CSR performance. For a sample of 20,410 firm-year observations and 2000–2021 period, we show that as firms' CSR spending increases, <em>IVOL</em> decreases. This relationship becomes stronger as social-and-community and employee-welfare spending increases but is insensitive to spending on environmental-protection. Cash flow volatility and financial-constraints decreases, and firm valuation improves with employee-welfare spending. It is important to integrate CSR with risk-management-strategies at the firm-level and policy-formulation at the economy-level.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47886,"journal":{"name":"Emerging Markets Review","volume":"68 ","pages":"Article 101331"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2025-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144570252","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Chuhong Wang , Xingfei Liu , Massimiliano Tani , Yan Zhao
{"title":"Safety nets and investment choices","authors":"Chuhong Wang , Xingfei Liu , Massimiliano Tani , Yan Zhao","doi":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101311","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101311","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We examine how reducing ‘background risk’ – the unobserved uncertainty in investment settings – affects household portfolios when individuals unexpectedly gain a comprehensive safety net encompassing health insurance, pension, and other benefits. Leveraging a natural experiment from China's property rights reform and RUMiC data, we find that the reform increases household savings rates and investments in risky assets, indicating that lower background risk enables households to allocate more resources to higher-return, more productive investments. Our results underscore institutional safety nets as effective policy tools to promote risk-taking and capital accumulation in emerging economies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47886,"journal":{"name":"Emerging Markets Review","volume":"68 ","pages":"Article 101311"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2025-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144510658","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Luis Gonzalo Llosa , Fernando J. Pérez-Forero , Vicente Tuesta
{"title":"Uncertainty shocks and financial conditions in Latin-American countries","authors":"Luis Gonzalo Llosa , Fernando J. Pérez-Forero , Vicente Tuesta","doi":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101327","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101327","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We study the connection between financial conditions and economic uncertainty across five major Latin American countries: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. Using a Bayesian Threshold Vector Autoregression (BVAR) model with stochastic volatility, our findings reveal that sudden jumps in uncertainty tighten financial conditions, increasing the likelihood of financial distress when the country credit spread exceeds a threshold value. Additionally, we find that uncertainty shocks are recessionary, leading to lower domestic short-term interest rates and a depreciation of domestic currencies against the US dollar. Notably, these effects are more pronounced and persistent during periods of financial distress. Another important finding is the heterogeneity in countries' responses to uncertainty, which reflects significant cross-country differences in economic fundamentals and policy frameworks. Finally, our results suggest that, while uncertainty contributes modestly to overall business cycle volatility, it has a substantial impact on financial variables—a dynamic that becomes significantly amplified during episodes of financial distress.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47886,"journal":{"name":"Emerging Markets Review","volume":"68 ","pages":"Article 101327"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2025-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144517093","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Modelling the demand for financial assets: The case of Sri Lanka","authors":"E.A. Selvanathan , Maneka Jayasinghe , Saroja Selvanathan , Brinda Viswanathan","doi":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101330","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101330","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper uses a portfolio allocation model to analyse the demand for household financial assets in the form of bank deposits, savings and term deposits for an emerging market, Sri Lanka, for the period 1981–2022. In contrast to previous research, findings reveal the presence of a non-linear relationship between household financial assets and share of asset allocation. The findings also suggest some degree of substitutability and complementarity between household bank investments. The findings of this study inform monetary policy decisions to encourage household savings in times of highly volatile political and economic conditions, such as civil wars and economic crises.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47886,"journal":{"name":"Emerging Markets Review","volume":"68 ","pages":"Article 101330"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2025-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144297244","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Chunkai Zhao , Runtao Wang , Boou Chen , Jingrong Li
{"title":"Hidden costs of separation: Exploring the effect of left-behind experiences on financial market participation in China","authors":"Chunkai Zhao , Runtao Wang , Boou Chen , Jingrong Li","doi":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101328","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101328","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study examines the effect of childhood left-behind experience (CLBE) on financial market participation in China. We find that the CLBE significantly reduces the likelihood of financial market participation, which is supported by several robustness checks. Mechanism tests show that this negative impact can be explained by human capital loss, earnings penalty effects, and financial accessibility. Further exploration indicates that the greater the CLBE intensity, the more pronounced the negative impact. Worse, the negative effect of CLBE is not eliminated by the subsequent return of parents, and the mitigation effects of digital development are limited.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47886,"journal":{"name":"Emerging Markets Review","volume":"68 ","pages":"Article 101328"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2025-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144330457","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Executive overconfidence, corporate investment, and institutional ownership: Evidence from Vietnam","authors":"Tam Tran , Craig Wilson , Fan Yang","doi":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101329","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101329","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Using Vietnamese data, we study how net-buyer executives (previously thought to identify overconfidence) affect corporate investment. We find that both net-buyer CEOs and net-buyer board chairs tend to increase corporate investment, which is mitigated by both domestic and state institutional ownership, and exacerbated by foreign institutional ownership. We find that net-buyer CEOs subsequently increase firm value, so they seem to have justified confidence in their ability to generate value, whereas net-buyer board chairs subsequently decrease firm value, displaying genuine overconfidence. As this distinction does not hold for dual board chair-CEOs, it could arise from information asymmetry between CEOs and chairs.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47886,"journal":{"name":"Emerging Markets Review","volume":"68 ","pages":"Article 101329"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2025-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144330456","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}