Amani kh. Bouresli

Following the global financial crisis in 2008, many countries have introduced economic and corporate reforms to assure fair markets and mitigate the risk of management misconduct. In this context, Kuwait has implemented two new major laws to restructure its capital markets and improve corporate governance. The two laws ere the Capital Market Authority Law (CMAL) and Kuwait Companies Law (KCL). In this paper, the authors sought answers to two questions: (1) has the performance of the listed companies changed in response to the enforcement of the laws? and (2) was there a direct influence of the laws on that change? The authors found some evidence of significant change in performance. Moreover, they provide evidence of KCL viability as a determinant of better performance. Interestingly, CMAL was found to be inadequate for improving firm performance. Implications and recommendations for further research are provided.

In developing markets, new regulations are imposed to protect investors, to assure fairness and to enhance trust through controlling all types of market abuse. In addition, these regulations are imposed to enhance the overall market performance and efficiency. Market liquidity is one of the main pillars used to measure market overall performance. In this paper, the authors attempt to analyze market liquidity before and after the passage of the Capital Market Authority Law of 2010 (CMA), aimed at enhancing investors’ confidence and reinforcing better disclosure quality and accountability for Kuwait public companies. By introducing six liquidity measures that captures market depth, turnover, and volatility, the authors documented highly significant deterioration in all the measures following the CMA Law with more profound effect on smaller firms. The researchers concluded that overstated regulations in developing markets, in spite of its goal of improving market overall performance, structure, enhancing investors’ protection, and market integrity, can have an adverse effect on market efficiency.

This study attempts to conduct a comprehensive investigation of the price-volume relation using daily stock prices of all publicly traded firms in Kuwait Boursa over the period 2005–2017. The aim is to provide evidence from an emerging market on the information arrival hypothesis, which is explained by the mixture of distribution and the sequential information arrival hypotheses. The investigation covered two main structural events; the 2008 financial crisis and the activation of Kuwait’s New Securities Law in 2010 (CMA). The GARCH-ARCH test revealed a positive contemporaneous relation between trading volume and market return, which implies that previous information shocks affect current returns and imply that Kuwait stock market is weakly efficient. When trading volume is included in the variance equation in the GARCH model, the test revealed that new information arrival is not simultaneously available to all traders and it takes time to observe, providing support to the sequential information arrival hypothesis (SAIH). Finally, there was no change in the price-volume relation around the two events and urgent assessment of the new market reform is recommended.