IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mgt/youmgt/v13y2015i4p369-387.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Efficient Market Hypothesis in South Africa: Evidence from Linear and Nonlinear Unit Root Tests

Author

Listed:
  • Andrew Phiri

    (North West University, South Africa)

Abstract

This study investigates the weak form efficient market hypothesis (EMH) for five generalized stock indices in the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) using weekly data collected from 31st January 2000 to 16th December 2014. In particular, we test for weak form market efficiency using a battery of linear and nonlinear unit root testing procedures comprising of the classical augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) tests, the two-regime threshold autoregressive (TAR) unit root tests described in Enders and Granger (1998) as well as the three-regime unit root tests described in Bec, Salem, and Carrasco (2004). Based on our empirical analysis, we are able to demonstrate that whilst the linear unit root tests advocate for unit roots within the time series, the nonlinear unit root tests suggest that most stock indices are threshold stationary processes. These results bridge two opposing contentions obtained from previous studies by concluding that under a linear framework the JSE stock indices offer support in favour of weak form market efficiency whereas when nonlinearity is accounted for, a majority of the indices violate the weak form EMH.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew Phiri, 2015. "Efficient Market Hypothesis in South Africa: Evidence from Linear and Nonlinear Unit Root Tests," Managing Global Transitions, University of Primorska, Faculty of Management Koper, vol. 13(4 (Winter), pages 369-387.
    • Handle: RePEc:mgt:youmgt:v:13:y:2015:i:4:p:369-387
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.fm-kp.si/zalozba/ISSN/1581-6311/13_369-387.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    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. M. Magnusson & B. Wydick, 2002. "How Efficient are Africa's Emerging Stock Markets?," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(4), pages 141-156.
    3. Narayan, Paresh Kumar, 2006. "The behaviour of US stock prices: Evidence from a threshold autoregressive model," Mathematics and Computers in Simulation (MATCOM), Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 103-108.
    4. Graham Smith & Keith Jefferis & Hyun-Jung Ryoo, 2002. "African stock markets: multiple variance ratio tests of random walks," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(7), pages 475-484.
    5. Abhyankar, A & Copeland, L S & Wong, W, 1997. "Uncovering Nonlinear Structure in Real-Time Stock-Market Indexes: The S&P 500, the DAX, the Nikkei 225, and the FTSE-100," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 15(1), pages 1-14, January.
    6. Walter Enders & Selahattin Dibooglu, 2001. "Long-Run Purchasing Power Parity with Asymmetric Adjustment," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 68(2), pages 433-445, October.
    7. Lee, Chien-Chiang & Tsong, Ching-Chuan & Lee, Cheng-Feng, 2014. "Testing For The Efficient Market Hypothesis In Stock Prices: International Evidence From Nonlinear Heterogeneous Panels," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(4), pages 943-958, June.
    8. Qaiser Munir & Kasim Mansur, 2009. "Is Malaysian Stock Market Efficient? Evidence from Threshold Unit Root Tests," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 29(2), pages 1359-1370.
    9. Narayan, Paresh Kumar & Smyth, Russell, 2007. "Mean reversion versus random walk in G7 stock prices evidence from multiple trend break unit root tests," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 152-166, April.
    10. Pandey, Vivek & Kohers, Theodor & Kohers, Gerald, 1998. "Deterministic Nonlinearity in the Stock Returns of Major European Equity Markets and the United States," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 33(1), pages 45-63, February.
    11. Enders, Walter & Granger, Clive W J, 1998. "Unit-Root Tests and Asymmetric Adjustment with an Example Using the Term Structure of Interest Rates," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 16(3), pages 304-311, July.
    12. Fredj Jawadi & Catherine Bruneau & Nadia Sghaier, 2009. "Nonlinear Cointegration Relationships Between Non‐Life Insurance Premiums and Financial Markets," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 76(3), pages 753-783, September.
    13. Mlambo, Chipo & Biekpe, Nicholas, 2007. "The efficient market hypothesis: Evidence from ten African stock markets," MPRA Paper 25968, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2007.
    14. Guneratne Banda Wickremasinghe, 2004. "Efficiency Of Foreign Exchange Markets: A Developing Country Perspective," International Finance 0406004, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Mubariz Hasanov & Tolga Omay, 2007. "Are the Transition Stock Markets Efficient? Evidence from Non-Linear Unit Root Tests," Central Bank Review, Research and Monetary Policy Department, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey, vol. 7(2), pages 1-12.
    16. Keith Jefferis & Graham Smith, 2005. "The Changing Efficiency Of African Stock Markets," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 73(1), pages 54-67, March.
    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. David de Villiers & Natalya Apopo & Andrew Phiri & David McMillan, 2020. "Unobserved structural shifts and asymmetries in the random walk model for stock returns in African frontier markets," Cogent Economics & Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(1), pages 1769348-176, January.
    2. Sinazo Guduza & Andrew Phiri, 2017. "Efficient market hypothesis: Evidence from the JSE equity and bond markets," Working Papers 1718, Department of Economics, Nelson Mandela University, revised Dec 2017.
    3. Erdas Mehmet Levent, 2019. "Validity of Weak-Form Market Efficiency in Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs): Evidence from Linear and Nonlinear Unit Root Tests," Review of Economic Perspectives, Sciendo, vol. 19(4), pages 399-428, December.
    4. Andrew Phiri, 2017. "The Unemployment-Stock Market Relationship in South Africa: Evidence from Symmetric and Asymmetric Cointegration Models," Managing Global Transitions, University of Primorska, Faculty of Management Koper, vol. 15(3 (Fall)), pages 231-254.
    5. Andrew Phiri, 2020. "Structural changes in exchange rate-stock returns dynamics in South Africa: examining the role of crisis and new trading platform," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 53(1), pages 171-193, February.

    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. Van Heerden, Dorathea & Rodrigues, Jose & Hockly, Dale & Lambert, Bongani & Taljard, Tjaart & Phiri, Andrew, 2013. "Efficient Market Hypothesis in South Africa: Evidence from a threshold autoregressive (TAR) model," MPRA Paper 50544, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Erdas Mehmet Levent, 2019. "Validity of Weak-Form Market Efficiency in Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs): Evidence from Linear and Nonlinear Unit Root Tests," Review of Economic Perspectives, Sciendo, vol. 19(4), pages 399-428, December.
    3. Shyh-Wei Chen, 2008. "Non-stationarity and Non-linearity in Stock Prices: Evidence from the OECD Countries," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 3(11), pages 1-11.
    4. 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.
    5. Graham Smith & Aneta Dyakova, 2014. "African Stock Markets: Efficiency and Relative Predictability," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 82(2), pages 258-275, June.
    6. 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.
    7. Durusu-Ciftci, Dilek & Ispir, M. Serdar & Kok, Dundar, 2019. "Do stock markets follow a random walk? New evidence for an old question," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 165-175.
    8. Ferreira, Paulo & Dionísio, Andreia & Correia, José, 2018. "Non-linear dependencies in African stock markets: Was subprime crisis an important factor?," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 505(C), pages 680-687.
    9. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:3:y:2008:i:11:p:1-11 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Graham Smith, 2008. "Liquidity And The Informational Efficiency Of African Stock Markets," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 76(2), pages 161-175, June.
    11. Ya-Chi Huang, 2017. "Exploring issues of market inefficiency by the role of forecasting accuracy in survivability," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 12(2), pages 167-191, July.
    12. Guduza, Sinazo & Phiri, Andrew, 2017. "Efficient Market Hypothesis: Evidence from the JSE equity and bond markets," MPRA Paper 83487, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Tülin Anlas & Cengiz Toraman, 2016. "Analysing the Efficiency of the Turkish Stock Market with Multiple Structural Breaks," International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, Human Resource Management Academic Research Society, International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, vol. 6(12), pages 721-740, December.
    14. Ankita Mishra & Vinod Mishra, 2011. "Is the Indian stock market efficient? Evidence from a TAR model with an autoregressive unit root," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(5), pages 467-472.
    15. Adeabah, David & Abakah, Emmanuel Joel Aikins & Tiwari, Aviral Kumar & Hammoudeh, Shawkat, 2023. "How far have we come and where should we go after 30+ years of research on Africa's emerging financial markets? A systematic review and a bibliometric network analysis," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    16. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:7:y:2007:i:4:p:1-12 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Gyamfi NE & Kyei KA & Gill R, 2016. "African Stock Markets and Return Predictability," Journal of Economics and Behavioral Studies, AMH International, vol. 8(5), pages 91-99.
    18. Lee, Chien-Chiang & Lee, Jun-De & Lee, Chi-Chuan, 2010. "Stock prices and the efficient market hypothesis: Evidence from a panel stationary test with structural breaks," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 49-58, January.
    19. Banu Kurtaran, 2015. "Re-examining the PPP Hypothesis via Nonlinearity and Smooth Breaks," Econometrics Letters, Bilimsel Mektuplar Organizasyonu (Scientific letters), vol. 2(1), pages 1-21.
    20. Fathia Elleuch Lahyani, 2014. "Are MENA and Pacific Basin Stock Equity Markets Predictable?," SAGE Open, , vol. 4(4), pages 21582440145, December.
    21. Olwetu Fusthane & Kapingura F M, 2017. "Weak Form Market Efficiency of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange: Pre, During and Post the 2008 Global Financial Crisis," Journal of Economics and Behavioral Studies, AMH International, vol. 9(5), pages 29-42.
    22. Li, Youwei & Hamill, Philip A. & Opong, Kwaku K., 2010. "Do benchmark African equity indices exhibit the stylized facts?," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 71-97.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH); Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE); South Africa; Threshold Autoregressive (TAR) model; unit roots;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C22 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes
    • C51 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Model Construction and Estimation
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading

    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:mgt:youmgt:v:13:y:2015:i:4:p:369-387. 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: Alen Jezovnik (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fmkupsi.html .

    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.