What are the risks when investing in thin emerging equity markets: Evidence from the Arab world

This study attempts to identify the risks involved when investing in five emerging Arab capital markets. We first find that a constant beta is not a good proxy for risk in these thinly traded emerging markets. However, firms’ fundamentals and country risk rating factors prove significant in explaining the cross-sections of stock returns. The paper provides three important contributions to the literature on asset pricing in emerging capital markets: (i) we show how country risk ratings can be aggregated into a country risk factor; (ii) we add to a growing literature suggesting that, in markets other than the US, it is possible to find large and growth stocks to be riskier than small and value stocks; (iii) we determine that despite economic, financial and political reforms, issues related to financial transparency and political instability are still powerful obstacles to investments in these nascent emerging markets.

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