Biography: Dr. Amalendu Bhunia is Professor, Department of Commerce, University of Kalyani, West Bengal, India. He has experience in teaching in the subject of finance, taxation, and statistics for more than 20 years. Dr. Bhunia has already published 106 research articles and 8 books in the national and international repute. He has presented 83 research papers in the national and international conference/seminar. At present, his Google Scholar Citation is 756 with h-index 15. He has completed 3 research projects, funded by the UGC, New Delhi. Now he has working in a major research project, funded by the ICSSR, New Delhi. His research interests are in the stock market, corporate finance, international finance and behavioural finance. Presently he is serving as an editor, reviewer and a member of the editorial board in 55 national and international journals. He served as an Editor-in-Chief, American Journal of Theoretical and Applied Business (Science Published Group, USA) for two years. Dr. Bhunia acted as a keynote speaker in 12 national and 5 international conferences. Five Ph.D. research scholars have already awarded Ph.D. degree and six have already awarded M.Phil. degree under his supervision.

Topic: Opportunity or Crisis? Volatility and Leverage Effect in the World’s Largest Economies

Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between asset volatility and leverage for the three largest economies (based on purchasing power parity) in the world; US, China, and India. Collectively, these economies represent Int$56,269 billion of economic power, making it important to understand the relationship among these economies that provide valuable investment opportunities for investors. We focus on a volatile period in economic history starting in 1997 when the Asian financial crisis began. Using autoregressive models, we find that Chinese stock markets have the highest volatility among the three stock markets while the US stock market has the highest average returns. This market is less efficient than US and Indian stock markets since the impact of new information takes longer to be reflected in stock prices. Our results show that the unconditional correlation among these stock markets is significant and positive although the correlation values are low in magnitude. We also find that past market volatility is a good indicator of future market volatility for our sample. The results also show that positive stock market returns result in lower volatility compared to negative stock market returns. These results show that the largest economies of the world are highly integrated and investors should consider volatility and leverage besides returns when investing in these countries.