Stock returns and output growth in emerging and advanced economies

Abstract

This paper studies the correlation between output growth and lagged stock returns in a panel of emerging market economies and advanced economies. It finds that the proportion of countries in which this correlation is significant is the same for emerging market economies as it is for advanced economies using yearly data, and somewhat lower using quarterly data. Asset prices therefore seem to contain valuable information to forecast output also in emerging market economies. Moreover, the paper finds that the strength of the correlation between output growth and lagged stock returns is significantly related to a number of stock market characteristics, such as a high market capitalization to GDP ratio and, less robustly, English legal origin and the number of listed domestic companies and initial public offerings.