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This chapter simultaneously investigates the most important calendar anomalies in stock returns: day of the week, turn of the month, turn of the year and holiday periods, in four of the most important Latin American stock markets: Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Chile. Previous evidence available for these countries is very limited. Our results indicate that the three markets show a rather similar pattern regarding return seasonality. A day of the week effect, consisting in negative returns on Mondays, is reported for all the stock markets but the Mexican. The turn of the year effect is observed only in Argentina, and moderate holiday and turn of the month effects are reported in the Brazilian and the Mexican markets, respectively. In addition, significant levels of first-order return autocorrelation are reported for the four stock markets. The contemporary financial crisis has dramatically affected the behaviour of stock prices worldwide, causing, among other effects, a huge increase in price volatility and probably changing the behaviour of participants in financial markets. We have also investigated to what extent our results have been affected by the current abnormal situation.

After the collapse of communist and socialist regimes at the beginning of 1990s, a number of Central and Eastern European (CEE) economies started their journey into capitalism by establishing private property and capital markets. As a result, a number of stock markets have since been established in the region. Since then, they have displayed considerable growth in size and degree of sophistication, and they have attracted the interest of academics for a number of reasons. First, these markets provide a possibility to re-examine existing asset-pricing models and pricing anomalies in the conditions of the evolving markets. Market efficiency of the CEE markets is tested in Ratkovicova (1999) and Gilmore and McManus (2001); a version of the CAPM is tested in Charemza and Majerowska (2000); Mateus (2004) explores the predictability of European emerging market returns within an unconditional asset-pricing framework while the January-pricing anomaly is studied in Henke (2003). Second, in the light of growing interdependencies between world equity markets due to enhanced capital movements, numerous studies have investigated the extent to which emerging European stock markets are integrated with global markets, and the extent to which they are subjects to global shocks (Gelos & Sahay, 2000; Gilmore & McManus, 2002; Scheicher, 2001). Among the CEE markets, those of the Vysegrad countries (Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic) have attracted most of the attention of the academics due to their economies faster growth relative to their regional counterparts (Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Croatia and Baltic countries), in addition to political stability and their (successfully realized) prospects of joining the European Union (EU).

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the applicability of Shewhart methodology and other quality management principles to gain a deeper understanding of the observed volatility in stock returns and its impact on market performance.

The validity of quality management philosophy in the context of financial market behaviour is discussed. The technique of rational subgrouping is used to identify the observable variations in stock returns as either common or special cause variation. The usefulness of the proposed methodology is investigated through empirical data. The risk/return and skewness/kurtosis trade-offs of S&P 500 stocks are examined. The consistency of this approach is reviewed by relating the separated variability to “efficient market” and “behavioural finance” theories.

Significant positive and negative risk/return trade-offs were found after partitioning the returns series into common and special cause periods, respectively, while total data did not exhibit a significant risk/return trade-off at all. A highly negative skewness/kurtosis trade-off was found in total and special cause periods as compared to the common cause periods. These results are broadly consistent with the theoretical concepts of finance and other empirical findings.

The quality management principles-based approach to analysing financial data avoids the complexities commonly found in stochastic-volatility forecasting models.

The results provide new insights into the impact of volatility in stock returns. They should have direct implications for financial market participants.

The authors explore the relevance of Shewhart methodology in analysing variability in stock returns through reviewing financial market behaviour.

Emerging financial markets have largely proven resilient to the consequences of the Global Financial Crisis. While this owes much to the bitter experience and economic strategies developed and implemented following the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997–1998, providence also played a hand in that relatively few of its financial institutions were exposed to the complex structured products that underpinned the demise of many financial intermediaries in the United States and Europe. The objective of this volume is to investigate and assess the impact and response to the crisis in emerging markets from a number of perspectives. These include asset pricing, contagion, financial intermediation, market structure and regulation. Our hope is that the assembled chapters offer clear insights into the complex financial arrangements that now link emerging and developed financial markets in the current economic environment. The volume spans four dimensions: first, a series of background studies offer explanations of the causes and impacts of the crisis on emerging markets more generally; then, implications are considered. The third and final sections provide insights from regional and country-specific perspectives.

This paper explores the relationship between size, book-to-market, beta, and expected stock returns in the U.S. Information Technology sector over the July 1990–June 2001 period. Two models, the multivariate model and the three-factor model, are employed to test these relationships. The risk-return tests confirm the relationship between size, book-to-market, beta and stock returns in IT stocks is different from that in other non-financial stocks. However, the sub-period results (the periods before and after the technology crash in April 2000) show that the nature of the relationship between stock returns, size, book-to-market, and market factors, or the magnitude of the size, book-to-market, and market premiums, is on average unchanged for both sub-periods. This result suggests the technology stock crash in April 2000 was not a correction of stock prices.

This paper investigates whether style migration affects industry evolution. The study documents industry evolution in terms of market weights, returns, and risks over the sample period from 1966 to 2000. The study shows that investment styles migrate in different degrees across different industries over time. In addition, the relation between industry evolution and style migration is neither simple nor static. The paper shows that growth‐value migration has predictability about the industries' returns and changes in volatility. Furthermore, style migration in the industry is mainly driven by existing firms changing their investment styles, not by new entrants to the industry causing style shifts. Both investment theory and its application to investment management critically depend on our understanding of stock return persistence anomalies. The ability to outperform buy‐and‐hold strategies by acquiring past winning stocks and selling past losing stocks, commonly referred to as “individual stock momentum,” remains one of the most puzzling of these anomalies. Moskowitz and Grinblatt (1999) attribute the bulk of the observed momentum in individual stock returns to industry momentum—the tendency for stock return patterns at the industry level to persist. It is well known that there are hot and cold IPO markets, and hot and cold sectors of the economy. Investors may simply herd toward (away from) these hot (cold) industries and sectors, causing price pressure that could create return persistence. The recent attraction to internet stocks is perhaps the latest manifestation of such behavior, which is not unlike a similar pattern biotechnology firms and railroad firms witnessed in 1980s and 1900s, respectively. For the active portfolio manager, rotation among different industries may provide opportunities for portfolio performance enhancement. As a result, understanding both the evolution of industries and the style factors causing cyclical variation in industry returns and risk plays an important role in professional portfolio management. Given the fact that a number of researchers have found consistent differences among the returns of various equity classes, investment styles of size and growth‐value are natural candidates for studying what causes cyclical variation in industry returns and risks. Individual investment styles perform differently during various stages of a cycle of bull market and bear market. For example, small cap stocks outperformed large cap stocks in the 1970s, but large cap stocks outperformed small cap stocks in the 1980s. Growth stocks outperformed value stocks in 1998 while the opposite occurred in 1997. Although it is well documented that the cross‐sectional variation in expected returns can be captured by three factors: market, size, and book‐to‐market, it is not yet clear whether cyclical variations in style attributes, not style returns, influence cross‐sectional variation in expected returns and return variance. In the investment industry, cyclical variation in style attributes is commonly called style migration. Perez‐Quiros and Timmermann (2000) provide a rational suggestion that small firms are most strongly affected by tighter credit market conditions in a recession and thus cyclical variations in style performance result from business cycles. As certain equity classes took off and others fell out of favor, investors overreacted, thereby causing cyclical variations in returns and risks of industries where firms are similarly sensitive to the fundamental shocks. In a recent study of behavioral finance, Barberis and Shleifer (2003) argue that in the presence of switchers who can affect asset prices by moving funds across styles, a style‐level momentum strategy could be successful because good performance by a style attracts switcher flows, which then drive the prices even higher. Analyzing the extent of interaction between style migrations and industry evolution may shed light on understanding the sources of predictable components in industry returns and risk. This paper provides such a contribution to the literature. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section I describes the sample data and summarizes industry evolution in terms of market capitalization weights in the entire market over time. Section II analyzes style migration within each industry. Section III examines the effect of style migration on industry evolution. Section IV concludes.

There is little research that examines the experiences of individuals who were assessed as having a sexual preference for children. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the lived experience of five incarcerated participants who possessed a sexual preference for either prepubescent or pubescent children and had completed an accredited programme for males convicted of sexual offences in HM Prison Service in England and Wales.

Semi-structured interviews were carried out and the data were analysed using the principles of an interpretative phenomenological approach.

Three recurrent themes were identified. These were: internal battle, I am always going to have these thoughts, and there is no help out there. In particular, these participants perceived that their sexual preference was relatively enduring and would require continuous management.

The results have implications for clinical practice and further research. Clinicians may need to think particularly creatively about their therapeutic plans and extend the parameters of desirable treatment goals for clients with sexual preferences for children.

To date there are very few studies that have examined the accounts of men with a sexual preference for children regarding their lived experience. Paedophilia constitutes a stable sexual preference, suggesting that convicted perpetrators with such a preference face an inherent problem. Whilst sexual urges may be regulated and arousability reduced, the underlying attraction may remain intact. In response to the lack of research in this area, the aim of this study was to investigate the lived experience of a sexual preference for children.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate outcomes associated with a training designed to improve interactions between first responders and individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Authors examined the responses of a group of first responders (N = 224) who completed a survey before and after a training to assess their (a) knowledge of ASD, (b) confidence for working with individuals with ASD, (c) comfort responding to a call and (d) ratings of the training they received.

Findings indicated first responders demonstrated more knowledge of ASD, increased confidence for working with individuals with ASD and improved comfort when responding to a call.

This preliminary report serves as initial evidence of the importance of rigorous work examining trainings designed to improve interactions between first responders and individuals with ASD.

The results of this study justify continued rigorous research on the effectivness of ENACT, as a training designed to improve knowledge and comfort of first responders who work with individuals with ASD.

This study fills an identified need for research on trainings designed to educate first responders about ASD.

When managers wish to raise external capital, investors must be able to trust that brokers and managers will not cheat them out of their money. To what extent is government regulation necessary for the existence of advanced financial transactions and, for that matter, the well functioning of markets in general? A growing literature argues that strong state enforcement is needed to foster financial markets (La Porta et al, 1997, Glaeser et al, 2001). The problem of contractual performance and, more generally, the problem of social order are some of the most enduring questions in the social sciences. German sociologist Georg Simmel may have put it most eloquently in his 1910 essay when he asked, “How is Society Possible?” but the question is rooted in a discourse dating back at least to Thomas Hobbes’s (1651) Leviathan. Hobbes contended that social order was impossible without external enforcement, and in a similar manner many modern commentators in law and finance maintain that the state must play an active role for markets to function. In his study of emerging financial markets in post‐Soviet Russia, Timothy Frye (2000:2) argues that, “politics underpins social order”.