IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/rqfnac/v57y2021i1d10.1007_s11156-020-00939-0.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Testing for efficiency in the Saudi stock market: does corporate governance change matter?

Author

Listed:
  • Mamdouh Abdulaziz Saleh Al-Faryan

    (University of Portsmouth
    The Saudi Economic Association
    Consultant in Economics and Finance)

  • Everton Dockery

    (University of Portsmouth)

Abstract

We study the informational efficiency of the Saudi stock market (SSM), while accounting for corporate governance change, based on single, multiple, and variance ratio-based WALD tests and runs test. The main findings indicate that when the whole period is considered, the random walk hypothesis is rejected, but when divided into two sub-periods separated by the pre-corporate governance and the period marked by corporate governance change, the analysis demonstrates sub-period improvement in weak-form efficiency for the examined series. Robustness of results is verified by analysis using sector indices, which point to market efficiency. Interestingly, Hurst Exponent estimates evidence long-range dependence which suggests the predictability of stock prices and the prospect of speculative opportunities.

Suggested Citation

  • Mamdouh Abdulaziz Saleh Al-Faryan & Everton Dockery, 2021. "Testing for efficiency in the Saudi stock market: does corporate governance change matter?," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 57(1), pages 61-90, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:rqfnac:v:57:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1007_s11156-020-00939-0
    DOI: 10.1007/s11156-020-00939-0
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11156-020-00939-0
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11156-020-00939-0?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paresh Kumar Narayan, 2005. "Are the Australian and New Zealand stock prices nonlinear with a unit root?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(18), pages 2161-2166.
    2. Metghalchi, Massoud & Chen, Chien-Ping & Hayes, Linda A., 2015. "History of share prices and market efficiency of the Madrid general stock index," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 178-184.
    3. Summers, Lawrence H, 1986. "Does the Stock Market Rationally Reflect Fundamental Values?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 41(3), pages 591-601, July.
    4. Grieb, Terrance & Reyes, Mario G, 1999. "Random Walk Tests for Latin American Equity Indexes and Individual Firms," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 22(4), pages 371-383, Winter.
    5. Zunino, Luciano & Zanin, Massimiliano & Tabak, Benjamin M. & Pérez, Darío G. & Rosso, Osvaldo A., 2009. "Forbidden patterns, permutation entropy and stock market inefficiency," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 388(14), pages 2854-2864.
    6. Kim, Jae H. & Shamsuddin, Abul, 2008. "Are Asian stock markets efficient? Evidence from new multiple variance ratio tests," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 518-532, June.
    7. Wendy Beekes & Philip Brown, 2006. "Do Better-Governed Australian Firms Make More Informative Disclosures?," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(3-4), pages 422-450.
    8. Shiller, Robert J. & Perron, Pierre, 1985. "Testing the random walk hypothesis : Power versus frequency of observation," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 18(4), pages 381-386.
    9. Chow, K. Victor & Denning, Karen C., 1993. "A simple multiple variance ratio test," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 385-401, August.
    10. Sadique, Shibley & Silvapulle, Param, 2001. "Long-Term Memory in Stock Market Returns: International Evidence," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 6(1), pages 59-67, January.
    11. Andrew W. Lo, A. Craig MacKinlay, 1988. "Stock Market Prices do not Follow Random Walks: Evidence from a Simple Specification Test," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 1(1), pages 41-66.
    12. Paresh Kumar Narayan & Russell Smyth, 2005. "Are OECD stock prices characterized by a random walk? Evidence from sequential trend break and panel data models," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(8), pages 547-556.
    13. Abraham Abraham & Fazal J. Seyyed & Sulaiman A. Alsakran, 2002. "Testing the Random Walk Behavior and Efficiency of the Gulf Stock Markets," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 37(3), pages 469-480, August.
    14. Jay Squalli, 2006. "A non-parametric assessment of weak-form efficiency in the UAE financial markets," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(18), pages 1365-1373.
    15. Richardson, Matthew & Smith, Tom, 1991. "Tests of Financial Models in the Presence of Overlapping Observations," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 4(2), pages 227-254.
    16. Anagnostidis, P. & Varsakelis, C. & Emmanouilides, C.J., 2016. "Has the 2008 financial crisis affected stock market efficiency? The case of Eurozone," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 447(C), pages 116-128.
    17. Kwiatkowski, Denis & Phillips, Peter C. B. & Schmidt, Peter & Shin, Yongcheol, 1992. "Testing the null hypothesis of stationarity against the alternative of a unit root : How sure are we that economic time series have a unit root?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 54(1-3), pages 159-178.
    18. Manolis Kavussanos & Everton Dockery, 2001. "A multivariate test for stock market efficiency: the case of ASE," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(5), pages 573-579.
    19. Grossman, Sanford J & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1980. "On the Impossibility of Informationally Efficient Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(3), pages 393-408, June.
    20. Alessandro Zattoni & Francesca Cuomo, 2008. "Why Adopt Codes of Good Governance? A Comparison of Institutional and Efficiency Perspectives," Corporate Governance: An International Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(1), pages 1-15, January.
    21. Maria Rosa Borges, 2010. "Efficient market hypothesis in European stock markets," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(7), pages 711-726.
    22. Wright, Jonathan H, 2000. "Alternative Variance-Ratio Tests Using Ranks and Signs," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 18(1), pages 1-9, January.
    23. Karemera, David & Ojah, Kalu & Cole, John A, 1999. "Random Walks and Market Efficiency Tests: Evidence from Emerging Equity Markets," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 13(2), pages 171-188, September.
    24. Qian, Xi-Yuan & Song, Fu-Tie & Zhou, Wei-Xing, 2008. "Nonlinear behaviour of the Chinese SSEC index with a unit root: Evidence from threshold unit root tests," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 387(2), pages 503-510.
    25. Antonios Antoniou & Nuray Ergul & Phil Holmes, 1997. "Market Efficiency, Thin Trading and Non‐linear Behaviour: Evidence from an Emerging Market," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 3(2), pages 175-190, July.
    26. Hoque, Hafiz A.A.B. & Kim, Jae H. & Pyun, Chong Soo, 2007. "A comparison of variance ratio tests of random walk: A case of Asian emerging stock markets," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 488-502.
    27. Benjamin Miranda Tabak, 2002. "The Random Walk Hypothesis and the Behavior of Foreign Capital Portfolio Flows: the Brazilian Stock Market Case," Working Papers Series 58, Central Bank of Brazil, Research Department.
    28. Peter Fortune, 1991. "Stock market efficiency: an autopsy?," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue Mar, pages 17-40.
    29. Graham Smith, 2007. "Random walks in Middle Eastern stock markets," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(7), pages 587-596.
    30. Leuz, Christian & Nanda, Dhananjay & Wysocki, Peter D., 2003. "Earnings management and investor protection: an international comparison," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(3), pages 505-527, September.
    31. Ayadi, O. Felix & Pyun, C. S., 1994. "An application of variance ratio test to the Korean securities market," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 18(4), pages 643-658, September.
    32. Osamah M. Al‐Khazali & David K. Ding & Chong Soo Pyun, 2007. "A New Variance Ratio Test of Random Walk in Emerging Markets: A Revisit," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 42(2), pages 303-317, May.
    33. Alexeev, Vitali & Tapon, Francis, 2011. "Testing weak form efficiency on the Toronto Stock Exchange," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 18(4), pages 661-691, September.
    34. Fama, Eugene F, 1970. "Efficient Capital Markets: A Review of Theory and Empirical Work," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 25(2), pages 383-417, May.
    35. Bushee, BJ & Noe, CF, 2000. "Corporate disclosure practices, institutional investors, and stock return volatility," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38, pages 171-202.
    36. Rim Ammar Lamouchi, 2020. "Long Memory and Stock Market Efficiency: Case of Saudi Arabia," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 10(3), pages 29-34.
    37. Diamond, Douglas W, 1985. "Optimal Release of Information by Firms," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(4), pages 1071-1094, September.
    38. Jasim Al-Ajmi & J. H. Kim, 2012. "Are Gulf stock markets efficient? Evidence from new multiple variance ratio tests," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(14), pages 1737-1747, May.
    39. Jorge L. Urrutia, 1995. "Tests Of Random Walk And Market Efficiency For Latin American Emerging Equity Markets," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 18(3), pages 299-309, September.
    40. Gozbasi, Onur & Kucukkaplan, Ilhan & Nazlioglu, Saban, 2014. "Re-examining the Turkish stock market efficiency: Evidence from nonlinear unit root tests," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 381-384.
    41. Hinich, Melvin J. & Serletis, Apostolos, 2007. "Episodic Nonlinear Event Detection in the Canadian Exchange Rate," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 102, pages 68-74, March.
    42. Butler, Kirt C. & Malaikah, S. J., 1992. "Efficiency and inefficiency in thinly traded stock markets: Kuwait and Saudi Arabia," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 197-210, February.
    43. Tiwari, Aviral Kumar & Kyophilavong, Phouphet, 2014. "New evidence from the random walk hypothesis for BRICS stock indices: a wavelet unit root test approach," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 38-41.
    44. Wang, Yudong & Liu, Li & Gu, Rongbao, 2009. "Analysis of efficiency for Shenzhen stock market based on multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 18(5), pages 271-276, December.
    45. Darrat, Ali F & Zhong, Maosen, 2000. "On Testing the Random-Walk Hypothesis: A Model-Comparison Approach," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 35(3), pages 105-124, August.
    46. Kian‐Ping Lim & Robert Brooks, 2011. "The Evolution Of Stock Market Efficiency Over Time: A Survey Of The Empirical Literature," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(1), pages 69-108, February.
    47. Terrance Grieb & Mario G. Reyes, 1999. "Random Walk Tests For Latin American Equity Indexes And Individual Firms," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 22(4), pages 371-383, December.
    48. Poterba, James M. & Summers, Lawrence H., 1988. "Mean reversion in stock prices : Evidence and Implications," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 27-59, October.
    49. Narayan, Paresh Kumar, 2008. "Do shocks to G7 stock prices have a permanent effect?," Mathematics and Computers in Simulation (MATCOM), Elsevier, vol. 77(4), pages 369-373.
    50. Al-Shboul, Mohammad & Alsharari, Nizar, 2019. "The dynamic behavior of evolving efficiency: Evidence from the UAE stock markets," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 119-135.
    51. Mubariz Hasanov, 2009. "Is South Korea's stock market efficient? Evidence from a nonlinear unit root test," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(2), pages 163-167.
    52. Hicham Benjelloun & Jay Squalli, 2008. "Do general indexes mask sectoral efficiencies?," International Journal of Managerial Finance, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 4(2), pages 136-151, April.
    53. Wendy Beekes & Philip Brown, 2006. "Do Better‐Governed Australian Firms Make More Informative Disclosures?," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(3‐4), pages 422-450, April.
    54. Ojah, Kalu & Karemera, David, 1999. "Random Walks and Market Efficiency Tests of Latin American Emerging Equity Markets: A Revisit," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 34(2), pages 57-72, May.
    55. Sensoy, A., 2013. "Generalized Hurst exponent approach to efficiency in MENA markets," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 392(20), pages 5019-5026.
    56. Fama, Eugene F, 1991. "Efficient Capital Markets: II," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(5), pages 1575-1617, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Noora Alzayed & Rasol Eskandari & Hassan Yazdifar, 2023. "Bank failure prediction: corporate governance and financial indicators," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 61(2), pages 601-631, August.
    2. Bibek Bhatta & Andrew Marshall & Suman Neupane & Chandra Thapa, 2022. "Foreign ownership and the enforcement of corporate governance reforms," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 58(2), pages 541-580, February.
    3. Hidaya Lawati & Khaled Hussainey & Roza Sagitova, 2021. "Disclosure quality vis-à-vis disclosure quantity: Does audit committee matter in Omani financial institutions?," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 57(2), pages 557-594, August.
    4. Daouda Lawa Tan Toe & Mamadou Toe & Tibi Didier Zoungrana, 2023. "Investigating the weak and semi-strong forms of Informational Efficiency on the West African Economic and Monetary Union’s Stock Exchange (BRVM) through returns predictability tests," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 3(9), pages 1-27, September.
    5. Mamdouh Abdulaziz Saleh Al-Faryan & Jassem Alokla, 2023. "Do Publicly Listed Insurance Firms in Saudi Arabia Have Strong Corporate Governance?," Economies, MDPI, vol. 11(1), pages 1-41, January.
    6. Adedoyin Isola LAWAL & Ezekiel OSENI & Abiola John ASALEYE & Bukola LAWAL-ADEDOYIN & Rachael OJEKA-JOHN, 2021. "Is the Stock Market Efficient? Evidence from Nonlinear Unit Root Tests for Nigeria," Asian Economic and Financial Review, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 11(5), pages 384-395, May.
    7. Nevi Danila, 2022. "Random Walk of Socially Responsible Investment in Emerging Market," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(19), pages 1-13, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Siva Kiran & Prabhakar Rao.R, 2019. "Analysis of Stock Market Efficiency in Emerging Markets: Evidence from BRICS," Romanian Economic Journal, Department of International Business and Economics from the Academy of Economic Studies Bucharest, vol. 22(72), pages 60-77, June.
    2. Amélie Charles & Olivier Darné, 2009. "Variance‐Ratio Tests Of Random Walk: An Overview," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(3), pages 503-527, July.
    3. Francesco Guidi & Rakesh Gupta & Suneel Maheshwari, 2011. "Weak-form Market Efficiency and Calendar Anomalies for Eastern Europe Equity Markets," Journal of Emerging Market Finance, Institute for Financial Management and Research, vol. 10(3), pages 337-389, December.
    4. Felix Schindler, 2014. "Persistence and Predictability in UK House Price Movements," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 48(1), pages 132-163, January.
    5. Felix Schindler, 2013. "Predictability and Persistence of the Price Movements of the S&P/Case-Shiller House Price Indices," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 46(1), pages 44-90, January.
    6. Hiremath, Gourishankar S & Bandi, Kamaiah, 2010. "Some Further Evidence on the Behaviour of Stock Returns in India," MPRA Paper 48518, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Nartea, Gilbert V. & Valera, Harold Glenn A. & Valera, Maria Luisa G., 2021. "Mean reversion in Asia-Pacific stock prices: New evidence from quantile unit root tests," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 214-230.
    8. Hiremath, Gourishankar S & Bandi, Kamaiah, 2009. "On the random walk characteristics of stock returns in India," MPRA Paper 46499, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Ghada Abbas, 2014. "Testing Random Walk Behavior in the Damascus Securities Exchange," International Journal of Academic Research in Accounting, Finance and Management Sciences, Human Resource Management Academic Research Society, International Journal of Academic Research in Accounting, Finance and Management Sciences, vol. 4(4), pages 317-325, October.
    10. Abullah M. Noman & Minhaz U. Ahmed, 2008. "Efficiency of the foreign exchange markets in South Asian Countries," AIUB Bus Econ Working Paper Series AIUB-BUS-ECON-2008-18, American International University-Bangladesh (AIUB), Office of Research and Publications (ORP), revised Jun 2008.
    11. Bley, Jorg, 2011. "Are GCC stock markets predictable?," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 217-237, September.
    12. Fathia Elleuch Lahyani, 2014. "Are MENA and Pacific Basin Stock Equity Markets Predictable?," SAGE Open, , vol. 4(4), pages 21582440145, December.
    13. Gozbasi, Onur & Kucukkaplan, Ilhan & Nazlioglu, Saban, 2014. "Re-examining the Turkish stock market efficiency: Evidence from nonlinear unit root tests," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 381-384.
    14. Hoque, Hafiz A.A.B. & Kim, Jae H. & Pyun, Chong Soo, 2007. "A comparison of variance ratio tests of random walk: A case of Asian emerging stock markets," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 488-502.
    15. Jay Squalli, 2006. "A non-parametric assessment of weak-form efficiency in the UAE financial markets," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(18), pages 1365-1373.
    16. Ashok Chanabasangouda Patil & Shailesh Rastogi, 2019. "Time-Varying Price–Volume Relationship and Adaptive Market Efficiency: A Survey of the Empirical Literature," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 12(2), pages 1-18, June.
    17. Charfeddine, Lanouar & Khediri, Karim Ben, 2016. "Time varying market efficiency of the GCC stock markets," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 444(C), pages 487-504.
    18. Stéphane Goutte & David Guerreiro & Bilel Sanhaji & Sophie Saglio & Julien Chevallier, 2019. "International Financial Markets," Post-Print halshs-02183053, HAL.
    19. Müge Özdemir, 2022. "Analyzing the Efficient Market Hypothesis with the Structural Break and Nonlinear Unit Root Tests: An Application on Borsa Istanbul," EKOIST Journal of Econometrics and Statistics, Istanbul University, Faculty of Economics, vol. 0(37), pages 257-282, December.
    20. Al Janabi, Mazin A.M. & Hatemi-J, Abdulnasser & Irandoust, Manuchehr, 2010. "An empirical investigation of the informational efficiency of the GCC equity markets: Evidence from bootstrap simulation," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 47-54, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Saudi stock market; Corporate governance; Market efficiency; Random walk; Variance ratio; Hurst exponent;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • G15 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - International Financial Markets
    • G34 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Mergers; Acquisitions; Restructuring; Corporate Governance

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:rqfnac:v:57:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1007_s11156-020-00939-0. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.