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Journal of Financial Stability Vol. 58 2022

When bad news is good news: Geopolitical risk and the cross-section of emerging market stock returns

Adam Zaremba1,2; Nusret Cakici3; Ender Demir4,5; Huaigang Long6

1 Poznań University of Economics and Business · 2 Montpellier Business School · 3 Fordham University · 4 Istanbul Medeniyet University · 5 Reykjavík University · 6 Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics

Abstract

Using a news-based gauge of geopolitical risk, we study its role in asset pricing in global emerging markets. We find that changes in risk positively predict future stock returns. The countries with the highest increase in geopolitical uncertainty outperform their counterparts with the lowest change by up to 1% per month. The anomaly is not explained by other established asset pricing effects and remains robust to many considerations. We link the observed phenomenon with investor overreaction to geopolitical news driven by the availability bias.

DOI
10.1016/j.jfs.2021.100964
Volume
58
Pages
100964
Language
en
Sources
crossref openalex bibtex:phds-export.bib

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