Real estate investment trusts (REITs) have been a very active sector in the capital market over the last few years. This paper examines the pricing of seasoned equity offers by equity REITs during 1991–1996. Consistent with Parsons and Raviv's model, we find that SEOs by REITs are underpriced with respect to both the closing price on the day before and the closing price on the day of the offer. Underpricing depends on the institutional ownership of the firm's common stock. Issues by firms with higher institutional ownership are more underpriced for post‐1990 REITs. Further, consistent with the notion that theories of IPO pricing apply to SEOs as well, the underpricing of SEOs is a function of the issue size and of the underwriter's reputation.

This paper uses panel data to examine the effect of exchange rate uncertainty on foreign direct investment in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand – countries that have continued to attract considerable foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows while also experiencing a great deal of volatility in exchange rates.  After establishing the stationarity of the data series, a panel cointegration test was conducted, following which an error correction model was developed and estimated using two sets of panel data.  The overall estimation results are consistent with theoretical predictions.  We find that exchange rate volatility has a favorable effect on foreign direct investment in our sample countries.

This article analyses stock market reactions to election polls. Stock markets anticipate the impact of events on future cash flows. Current values depend on future cash flows and risk prospects. We posit that election polls are indications of the political platforms that are expected to win elections. Given the traditional philosophical differences between the Republican and the Democratic Parties, and the specific campaign promises of the US presidential candidates in the 2008 election, we hypothesize that stock market reacts negatively to the prospect of Barack Obama winning the election. We test this hypothesis by relating daily stock index returns to a lag value of differences in election polls that show Obama's advantage over John McCain. The results consistently show that stock market reacts negatively (positively) when Obama (McCain) has poll advantage over McCain (Obama). We conclude that there are differences in perception between Main Street and Wall Street.

This paper studies the effect of oil price change on the real exchange rate between the Indian rupee and the U.S. dollar. For that, a model is developed which is based on a monetary model of exchange rate which incorporates the real GDP, real money balances, and the interest rates of both the home and foreign country and the real price of the crude oil. Quarterly time series data from 1996 to 2012 is used. Before estimating the model, the time series properties of the data are diagnosed in order to ensure the stationarity of the data. The data series are found to be integrated of order one and the null hypothesis of no cointegration is rejected. Therefore an error correction model is developed and estimated. The estimated results suggest that there is no detectable effect of oil price change on the real exchange rate between the Indian rupee and the U.S. dollar.

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