Skip to main content

Statistical Analysis of Political Cycles in Australian Stock Market Returns

  • Conference paper
Modeling Dependence in Econometrics

Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 251))

  • 1914 Accesses

Abstract

Political cycles in the Australian stock market from January 1901 to July 2011 are analysed through econometric volatility models. The stochastic volatility model with a skew t distribution for return and a Student-t distribution for volatility is proposed for analysis, estimated via Bayesian techniques. Evidence from the full period shows higher return under non-Labor governments while there is little evidence of election or length-of-term effects on market return. If we split the data before and after World War II, political cycles are non-existent. There is however clear evidence of positive skewness of returns before the war compared to negative skewness otherwise.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 169.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 219.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Allvine, F., O’Neill, D.: Stock market returns and the presidential Election Cycle. Financial Analysts Journal 36, 49–56 (1980)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Anderson, H., Malone, C., Marshall, B.: Investment returns under right-and left-wing governments in Australasia. Pacifc-Basin Finance Journal 16, 252–267 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Andrieu, C., Doucet, A., Robert, C.: Computational advances for and from Bayesian analysis. Statistical Science 19, 118–127 (2004)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  4. Beedles, W.: Asymmetry in Australian Equity Returns. Australian Journal of Management 11, 1–12 (1986)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Berg, A., Meyer, R., Yu, J.: Deviance information criterion for comparing stochastic volatility models. Journal of Business & Economic Statistics 22, 107–120 (2004)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  6. Bialkowski, J., Gottschalk, K., Wisniewski, T.: Stock market volatility around national elections. Journal of Banking & Finance 32, 1941–1953 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Bohl, M., Gottschalk, K.: International evidence on the Democrat premium and the presidential cycle effect. The North American Journal of Economics and Finance 17, 107–120 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Bollerslev, T.: Generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity. Journal of Econometrics 31, 307–327 (1986)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  9. Booth, J., Booth, L.: Is presidential cycle in security returns merely a reflection of business conditions? Review of Financial Economics 12, 131–159 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Branco, M., Dey, D.: A general class of multivariate skew-elliptical distributions. Journal of Multivariate Analysis 79, 99–113 (2001)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  11. Cahan, J., Malone, C., Powell, J., Choti, U.: Stock market political cycles in a small, two-party democracy. Applied Economics Letters 12, 735–740 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Choy, S., Chan, J.: Scale mixtures distributions in statistical modelling. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Statistics 50, 135–146 (2008)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  13. Danielsson, J.: Stochastic volatility in asset prices estimation with simulated maximum likelihood. Journal of Econometrics 64, 375–400 (1994)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  14. Demarta, S., McNeil, A.: The t copula and related copulas. International Statistical Review 73, 111–129 (2005)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  15. Fung, T., Seneta, E.: Modelling and estimation for bivariate financial returns. International Statistical Review 78, 117–133 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Gerlach, R., Chen, C.: Bayesian inference and model comparison for asymmetric smooth transition heteroskedastic models. Statistics and Computing 18, 391–408 (2008)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  17. Ghysels, E., Harvey, A., Renault, E.: Stochastic Volatility. In: Maddala, G., Rao, C. (eds.) Handbook of Statistics: Statistical Methods in Finance, vol. 14. North-Holland, Butterworth Heinemann, Amsterdam (1996)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Ghysels, E., Plazzi, A., Valkanov, R.: Conditional skewness of stock market returns in developed and emerging markets and its economic fundamentals. Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper, 11-06 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Gilks, W., Richardson, S., Spiegelhalter, D.: Markov Chain Monte Carlo in Practice. Chapman and Hall, London (1996)

    Book  MATH  Google Scholar 

  20. Gray, P., Kalotay, E.: Testing the multivariate normality of Australian stock returns. Australian Journal of Management 23, 135–150 (1998)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Hensel, C., Ziemba, W.: United States investment returns during Democratic and Republican Administrations. Financial Analysts Journal 51, 61–69 (1995)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Herbst, A., Slinkman, C.: Political-cconomic cycles in the U.S. stock market. Financial Analysts Journal 40, 38–44 (1984)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Hibbs, D.J.: Political parties and macroeconomic policy. The American Political Science Review 71, 1467–1487 (1977)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Huang, R.: Common Ssock returns and presidential elections. Financial Analysts Journal 41, 58–65 (1985)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Jacquier, E., Polson, N., Rossi, P.: Bayesian analysis of stochastic volatility models. Journal of Business & Economic Statistics 12, 371–389 (1994)

    Google Scholar 

  26. Koopman, S., Hol Uspensky, E.: The stochastic volatility in mean model: empirical evidence from international stock markets. Journal of Applied Econometrics 17, 667–689 (2002)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Niderhoffer, V., Gibbs, S., Bullock, J.: Presidential elections and the stock market. Financial Analysts Journal 26, 111–113 (1970)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Powell, J., Jing, S., Smith, T., Whaley, R.: The persistent presidential dummy. Journal of Portfolio Management 33, 133–143 (2007)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Praet, P., Wilson, E.: The distribution of stock market returns: 1958-1973. Australian Journal of Management 3, 79 (1978)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Riley, W.J., Luksetich, W.: The market prefers republicans: myth or reality. The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis 15, 541–560 (1980)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Ruiz, E.: Quasi-maximum likelihood estimation of stochastic volatility models. Journal of Econometrics 63, 289–306 (1994)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  32. Santa-Clara, P., Valkanov, R.: The presidential puzzle: political cycles and the stock market. The Journal of Finance 58, 1841–1872 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. Smith, A., Roberts, G.: Bayesian computation via the Gibbs sampler and related Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B 55, 3–23 (1993)

    MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  34. Snowberg, E., Wolfers, J., Zitzewitz, E.: Partisan impacts on the economy: Evidence from prediction markets and close elections. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 122, 807–829 (2007)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Spiegelhalter, D., Best, N., Carlin, B., Van Der Linde, A.: Bayesian measures of model complexity and fit. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B 64, 583–639 (2002)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  36. Spiegelhalter, D., Thomas, A., Best, N., Lunn, D.: Bayesian inference using Gibbs sampling for Windows (WinBUGS), Cambridge, UK (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  37. Stacy, E.: A Generalization of the Gamma Distribution. The Annals of Mathematical Statistics 33, 1187–1192 (1962)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  38. Wisniewski, T.: Can political factors explain the behaviour of stock prices beyond the standard present value models? Applied Financial Economics 19, 1873–1884 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  39. Worthington, A.: Political cycles in the Australian stock market since Federation. Australian Economic Review 42, 397–409 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Yu, J.: Forecasting volatility in the New Zealand stock market. Applied Financial Economics 12, 193–202 (2002)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to S. T. Boris Choy .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this paper

Cite this paper

Choy, S.T.B., Bond, C.M. (2014). Statistical Analysis of Political Cycles in Australian Stock Market Returns. In: Huynh, VN., Kreinovich, V., Sriboonchitta, S. (eds) Modeling Dependence in Econometrics. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 251. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03395-2_20

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03395-2_20

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-03394-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-03395-2

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics