Emerging Markets ReviewPub Date : 2025-11-01Epub Date: 2025-09-22DOI: 10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101372
Jie Li , Wenwen Zhou , Xiaohong Li , Yu Wu
{"title":"Digital credit scoring and household consumption: Evidence from Sesame Credit in China","authors":"Jie Li , Wenwen Zhou , Xiaohong Li , Yu Wu","doi":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101372","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101372","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study investigates the welfare-enhancing effects of digital personal credit scoring systems, with a particular focus on household consumption. Utilizing the latest nationally representative microdata from the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) for 2021 and 2023, our empirical analysis demonstrates that Sesame Credit – Ant Group's digital credit product - exerts a statistically significant positive effect on household consumption expenditure. This stimulative effect is particularly observed in developmental and hedonic consumption. Mechanism analysis reveal that this impact operates primarily through improved credit accessibility and the relief of liquidity constraints. Furthermore, our results suggest that vulnerable households benefit more from Sesame Credit.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47886,"journal":{"name":"Emerging Markets Review","volume":"69 ","pages":"Article 101372"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2025-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145157853","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}
Emerging Markets ReviewPub Date : 2025-11-01Epub Date: 2025-09-13DOI: 10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101358
Taniya Ghosh, Yadavindu Ajit
{"title":"Does inflation targeting live up to all the hype?","authors":"Taniya Ghosh, Yadavindu Ajit","doi":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101358","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101358","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study evaluates the impact of inflation targeting (IT) on inflation levels, volatility, and persistence in 59 emerging markets from 1985 to 2019, addressing the limitations of traditional methods that ignore staggered adoption. Using methodology that accounts for staggered implementation, IT is found to significantly reduce inflation, particularly when hyperinflationary economies are excluded. However, its effects on volatility and persistence are less conclusive. While traditional models suggest initial reductions in volatility, incorporating staggered adoption reveals no lasting impact. Similarly, IT does not significantly influence inflation persistence. The findings emphasize IT’s effectiveness in lowering inflation but limited influence on other aspects.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47886,"journal":{"name":"Emerging Markets Review","volume":"69 ","pages":"Article 101358"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2025-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145060016","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}
Emerging Markets ReviewPub Date : 2025-11-01Epub Date: 2025-09-12DOI: 10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101364
Dhanushika Samarawickrama, Pallab Kumar Biswas, Helen Roberts
{"title":"Social disclosure, business groups and firm risk","authors":"Dhanushika Samarawickrama, Pallab Kumar Biswas, Helen Roberts","doi":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101364","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101364","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Using a sample of 5718 BSE-listed firm-year observations from 2008 to 2021, we find that increased CSR disclosure (CSRDS) is negatively associated with firm risk. However, the risk-reducing effect of CSRDS is less pronounced in business group firms, with a stronger attenuation in companies managed by affiliated CEOs. Additional analyses indicate that enhanced CSRDS, particularly after the enforcement of mandatory CSR regulations, significantly reduces total and idiosyncratic risk. These findings highlight how mandatory regulatory compliance mitigates specific components of firm risk and offer policymakers, practitioners, and investors insights to navigate risk management within the governance structures of a developing market.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47886,"journal":{"name":"Emerging Markets Review","volume":"69 ","pages":"Article 101364"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2025-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145105374","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":"Dynamics and predictability in informal currency markets: The case of the Cuban Peso","authors":"Alejandro García-Figal , Milton García-Borroto , Carlos Lage-Codorniu , Roberto Mulet , Alejandro Lage-Castellanos","doi":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101374","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101374","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We investigate the short-term dynamics and predictability of the Cuban informal currency market, a critical case study for understanding emerging foreign exchange markets in countries with informal financial systems. Using social media messages of sell/buy intentions as a proxy for real market activity, we define a reference price for this informal market based on the Walrasian auction to capture market price trends. We explore how market fluctuations correlate with public announcements and news events, with a particular focus on understanding why overshooting events occur and how they can be anticipated. While the inherent inefficiency of these markets implies some level of predictability, standard methods fall short in capturing trend changes during overshooting episodes. To address this, we employ advanced Artificial Neural Networks (GRU-type), fine-tuned through bootstrapping, to generate accurate short-term forecasts. Our findings highlight that inefficiencies in informal markets create exploitable patterns, and that a neural network — carefully calibrated and optimized — is essential for anticipating overshooting events. This study contributes empirical evidence to the understanding of informal market dynamics and underscores the importance of developing predictive tools tailored to emerging foreign exchange markets.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47886,"journal":{"name":"Emerging Markets Review","volume":"69 ","pages":"Article 101374"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2025-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145265715","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}
Emerging Markets ReviewPub Date : 2025-11-01Epub Date: 2025-09-18DOI: 10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101363
Boileau Loko , Nelie Nembot , Marcos Poplawski-Ribeiro
{"title":"Private savings and COVID-19 in Sub-Saharan Africa","authors":"Boileau Loko , Nelie Nembot , Marcos Poplawski-Ribeiro","doi":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101363","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101363","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The paper investigates the impact of COVID-19 on private savings and economic activity in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Using data for at least 13 SSA economies, we find that private saving rates have not increased during COVID-19 in SSA, a finding that contrasts with other regions in the world. Instead, COVID-19 mortality in our estimations is significantly associated with a decline in private savings and economic growth in SSA. Robustness checks and analyses of household surveys during the pandemic validate and explore some of the underlying drivers of those results. The paper further confirms real per capita economic growth as a key determinant of private savings in the region since 1983.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47886,"journal":{"name":"Emerging Markets Review","volume":"69 ","pages":"Article 101363"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2025-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145265716","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}
Emerging Markets ReviewPub Date : 2025-11-01Epub Date: 2025-08-05DOI: 10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101345
Zhiwen Wang
{"title":"The impact of common ownership between banks and firms on corporate ESG performance: Evidence from China","authors":"Zhiwen Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101345","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101345","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper examines the impact and mechanisms of common ownership between banks and firms on corporate ESG performance, by using a dataset derived from the lending and equity relationship between Chinese A-share listed companies and banks from 2009 to 2023. This common ownership significantly enhances corporate ESG performance through a financing channel that increases loan size and eases financing constraints, and an information channel that reduces information asymmetry and increases external regulation. The positive effect is particularly evident among firms with lower media attention and heavily polluting industries.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47886,"journal":{"name":"Emerging Markets Review","volume":"69 ","pages":"Article 101345"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2025-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144781881","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}
Emerging Markets ReviewPub Date : 2025-09-01Epub Date: 2025-06-09DOI: 10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101326
Xiangyi Zhou , Fang Zheng , Sheng Xiao
{"title":"Media coverage of startups and venture capital investments","authors":"Xiangyi Zhou , Fang Zheng , Sheng Xiao","doi":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101326","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101326","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Using a large sample of over 5000 startups across various industries and 524 media outlets in China between 2000 and 2016, we examine the effects of media coverage of startups on Venture Capital (VC) investment decisions and performance. To the best of our knowledge, for the first time in finance literature, we have discovered that media coverage of startups significantly affects VC investment decisions and exit performance. Specifically, such coverage, especially positive coverage, significantly increases the probability and amount of VC investments in startups. It also significantly improves the exit performance of VC investments. The significant effects of media coverage of startups on VC investments are caused by market-oriented instead of state-controlled media. We further find that VC investments in a focal startup are significantly influenced by the average media coverage of other startups in the same industry or the same city. Our results are robust to a battery of robustness tests.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47886,"journal":{"name":"Emerging Markets Review","volume":"68 ","pages":"Article 101326"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144290632","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}
Emerging Markets ReviewPub Date : 2025-09-01Epub Date: 2025-07-04DOI: 10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101325
Liangliang Zhang , Li Guo , Weiping Zhang , Tingting Ye , Qing Yang , Ruyan Tian
{"title":"Stock market index enhancement via machine learning","authors":"Liangliang Zhang , Li Guo , Weiping Zhang , Tingting Ye , Qing Yang , Ruyan Tian","doi":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101325","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101325","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Stock market index enhancement remains a widely adopted strategy among hedge funds within China’s financial market. The underlying algorithm aims to fine-tune the weightings of individual stocks within a benchmark index, thereby enhancing the performance of the target portfolio relative to its original benchmark.</div><div>Our innovative numerical framework stands out for its generality, rapidity, and theoretical convergence to the global optimum under reasonable assumptions. It also shines in tackling high-dimensional portfolio optimization problems. Empirical results demonstrate that the stock market index enhancement strategy, as computed by our algorithm, consistently delivers stable and significant excess returns, outperforming existing benchmarks.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47886,"journal":{"name":"Emerging Markets Review","volume":"68 ","pages":"Article 101325"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144570251","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}
Emerging Markets ReviewPub Date : 2025-09-01Epub Date: 2025-06-26DOI: 10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101317
Humoud Alsabah , Khaled Alsabah
{"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":"2025-09-01","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}
Emerging Markets ReviewPub Date : 2025-09-01Epub Date: 2025-07-03DOI: 10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101337
Boakye Dankwah , Emmanuel Joel Aikins Abakah , Elikplimi Komla Agbloyor , Chi-Chuan Lee
{"title":"Dynamic connections between Africa's emerging equity markets and global financial assets","authors":"Boakye Dankwah , Emmanuel Joel Aikins Abakah , Elikplimi Komla Agbloyor , Chi-Chuan Lee","doi":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101337","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ememar.2025.101337","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Using the novel quantile vector autoregression (QVAR) approach, the present study investigates the dynamics of the spillovers and connectedness among Africa's emerging equity markets and the international equity and alternative markets under different market conditions from 2012 to 2022. More specifically, the study analyzes the shock transmission between 12 of Africa's emerging and frontier markets, 4 international equity markets, and 5 alternative emerging assets under both normal and extreme market conditions. The study finds asymmetric spillovers and connectedness among Africa's equity markets and the international markets across the different market conditions. Moreover, it identifies close symmetry in the return and volatility spillovers and connectedness under bullish and bearish market conditions. The findings also reveal that Africa's markets are more connected with conventional assets than with emerging alternative assets. Furthermore, the study observes a low degree of connectedness among Africa's equity markets across the analyzed market conditions, signifying the low level of integration of the markets. These results suggest the potential diversification benefits of the assessed markets for portfolio investors under normal market conditions but fail to evidence a hedge or safe haven for investors during bad times because the volume of the spillovers and connectedness with other assets increases as conditions become fiercer.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47886,"journal":{"name":"Emerging Markets Review","volume":"68 ","pages":"Article 101337"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144596372","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}