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We conduct a comprehensive study on the effect of culture on stock market linkages. With data on 25 national stock markets, a quantile regression model is used to estimate the determinants of market linkages using culture variables such as language, religion, and Hofstede's culture dimensions while controlling for distance, economic and legal variables. Further, we test whether these effects hold across regions and if changes are detected during periods of market crisis. We also test if market liquidity, an indicator of market efficiency, diminishes the impact of culture on market linkages. The main conclusion is that culture preferences shape investor choices, which affects integration between stock markets. The equity markets with similar cultural traits tend to increase market linkages; however, we observe differences across regions. Furthermore, liquidity and economic uncertainty fail to have an impact on the significance of culture variables as determinants of market linkages.

Since 2005, the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) has seen a rapid growth in trading volume activity, with 1.44 billion tons of CO 2 traded in 2007. The total value of these trading transactions was €24.1 billion in 2007, confirming the EU ETS as the largest emissions trading system by transaction value. In this paper, we test whether this market exhibits predictability of prices in terms of momentum (i.e., positive/negative changes continuing) and overreaction (i.e., positive/negative changes reversing). We test whether momentum and overreaction exist in the carbon price, and if they do, whether they result in profitable trading strategies. We document a robust short-term momentum and medium-term overreaction within the EU ETS. We also find statistically significant returns in a number of strategies tested. The strategies employed provide excess returns that remain achievable in a practical sense even after transaction costs have been taken into consideration. Our results therefore provide evidence that the EU ETS is not informationally efficient.

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We examine seasonal anomalies in Johannesburg daily stock returns from January 1973 to September 2012. This paper focuses on three seasonal effects: day-of-the-week, beginning-of-the-month and month-of-the-year. We found no compelling evidence for either a January or December effect in the South African market. Instead, our results support the presence of strong Monday and Tuesday effects, whereby the returns on Monday and Tuesday are significantly lower than the return on the benchmark day of Wednesday. Moreover, the beginning-of-the-month effect is quite pronounced in which second and third trading day returns are significantly larger than returns in other trading days. Nevertheless, these strong day-of-the-week and beginning-of-the-month seasonal effects disappear in the post-2008 period following the global financial crisis. It appears that the South African stock market may have filtered out seasonal anomalies and become more efficient in the aftermath of the recent global financial crisis.

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We present evidence that in the USA, the relative price of housing exhibits secular growth and that its growth rate is a stationary series. The ratio of the value of house stock to either consumption or GDP is also stationary. We develop a two-sector neoclassical growth model with housing that is consistent with these facts. Among the long-run determinants of the growth of housing prices and housing stock per capita are factor intensities, rates of technological progress in both the housing and non-housing sectors, and the excess of population growth over land growth. We also study the model's transitional dynamics. Copyright 2010 The Authors. Journal compilation 2010 Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd