New market reforms and stock exchange liquidity: the case of Kuwait

This research explores the influence of foreign ownership on non-financial public shareholding firms in the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE). The study involved an investigation into the connection between non-Jordanian ownership and the company growth opportunity, stock liquidity, leverage, dividend policy and business output. The results highlight that foreign ownership can provide improved corporate governance practices by playing a decisive role in increasing the growth opportunity and enhancing the firms’ market valuation, as measured by Tobin’s Q. Moreover, the findings indicate that companies with foreign board membership have better operating performance and higher firm value. The rewards were reaped by foreign investors based on their superior monitoring ability, which affects the decisions made and actions taken by management.

Extant literature shows the positive impact of institutional development on investor rationality and market efficiency. The authors extend this evidence by investigating the performance-flow relationship in the Chinese mutual fund market before and after the enforcement of the revised Law of the People’s Republic of China on Securities Investment Fund. Empirical evidence reveals that Chinese investors irrationally chase past star performers before institutional reform, but gradually become rational and less obsessed with star-chasing behaviors after reform. Moving one percentile upward in the relative performance among the star funds is associated with money inflows by 0.532% after reform, much lower than 1.433% before reform. The findings confirm the positive influence of institutional development on investor rationality and market efficiency. The successful experience can be borrowed by other emerging markets with less developed institutions.

The study identifies the features of the USD/UAH exchange rate dynamics for the period from January 2014 to May 2020. The main purpose of the empirical analysis is to determine the current trend of the USD/UAH exchange rate (is it random or permanent), indicate the presence of seasonality in foreign exchange rate dynamics and evaluate its sensitivity to external shocks. Three hypotheses are tested using several methods of time series analysis (autocorrelation analysis, ADF, Phillips-Perron and Granger tests), including a trend-season model using a time series of one variable (ARMA), a multifactor VAR-model, impulse functions. The results show that, the movement of the hryvnia exchange rate against the US dollar is a stochastic process. Its trend has a random component and tends to change sharply over time. Moreover, exchange rate fluctuations are seasonal. It depreciates in the first and second quarters, and strengthens in the third and fourth. Some macroeconomic indicators cause a positive or negative reaction of the USD/UAH exchange rate. This indicates that today the Ukrainian foreign exchange market is relatively efficient, but stable, since its reaction to external shocks is short-term, insignificant and tends to fade out. Although the findings are controversial, they support the generally accepted view that the exchange rate formation is a multifactorial process that depends on several macroeconomic factors. However, high volatility and random walk specification indicate that it is almost impossible to predict its future value at this time.

Acknowledgment
The material was prepared within the framework of the scientific research Modeling and Forecasting the Behavior of Financial Markets as an Information Base for Ensuring Financial Stability and Security of the State, No. 0117U003936 (supervisor Alex Plastun).