The bond market is a key securities market and emerging economies present exciting, new investment opportunities. This timely book provides insights into these emerging bond markets through empirical models and analytical databases, i.e. Bloomberg, Eikon Refinitiv and the Russian Cbonds. The book looks at the dynamics of the development of emerging bond markets, their competitiveness, features and patterns using macro and micro level data. It also takes into consideration various securities type i.e. government, corporate, sub-federal and municipal bonds, to identify respective challenges and risks. The book also analyses factors that may inhibit or stimulate a well-balanced financial market. It includes case studies of Asian, Latin American and Russian bond markets, as also as cross-country comparisons. It will be a useful reference for anyone who is interested to learn more of the bond market and the modelling techniques for critical data analysis.

Unconstrained multi-sector bond funds (MSBFs) can be a source of spillovers to emerging markets and potentially exert a sizable impact on cross-border flows. MSBFs have grown their investment in emerging markets in recent years and are highly concentrated—both in their positions and their decision-making. They typically also exhibit opportunistic behavior much more so than other investment funds. Theoretically, their size, multisector mandate, and unconstrained nature allows MSBFs to be a source of financial stability in periods of wide-spread market turmoil while others sell at fire-sale prices. However, this note, building on the analysis of Cortes and Sanfilippo (2020) and incorporating data around the COVID-19 crisis, finds that MSBFs could have contributed to increase market stress in selected emerging markets. When faced with large investor redemptions during the crisis, our sample of MSBFs chose to rebalance their portfolios in a concentrated manner, raising a large proportion of cash in a few specific local currency bond markets. This may have contributed to exacerbating the relative underperformance of these local currency bond markets to broader emerging market indices.

Provides a detailed survey of a largely unexplored territory - the bond markets in the Dynamic Asian Economies of Hong Kong, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand.

An interesting disconnect has taken shape between local currency- and hard currency-denominated bonds in emerging markets with respect to their portfolio flows and prices since the start of the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Emerging market assets have recovered sharply from the COVID-19 sell-off in 2020, but the post-pandemic recovery in 2021 has been highly uneven. This note seeks to answer why. Yields of local currency-denominated bonds have risen faster and are approaching their pandemic highs, while hard currency bond yields are still near their post-pandemic lows. Portfolio flows to local currency debt have similarly lagged flows to hard currency bonds. This disconnect is closely linked to the external environment and fiscal and inflationary pressures. Its evolution remains a key consideration for policymakers and investors, since local markets are the main source of funding for emerging markets. This note draws from the methodology developed in earlier Global Financial Stability Reports on fundamentals-based asset valuation models for funding costs and forecasting models for capital flows (using the at-risk framework). The results are consistent across models, indicating that local currency assets are significantly more sensitive to domestic fundamentals while hard currency assets are dependent on the external risk sentiment to a greater extent. This suggests that the post-pandemic, stressed domestic fundamentals have weighed on local currency bonds, partially offsetting the boost from supportive global risk sentiment. The analysis also highlights the risks emerging markets face from an asynchronous recovery and weak domestic fundamentals.

Foreign holdings of emerging markets (EMs) government bonds have increased substantially over the last decade. While foreign participation in local-currency sovereign bond markets provides an additional source of financing and reduces sovereign yields, it raises concerns about increased sensitivity of yields to shifts in market sentiment. The analysis in this paper suggests that foreign participation and an undiversified investor base transmit global financial shocks to local-currency sovereign bond markets by increasing yield volatility and, beyond a certain threshold, amplify these spillovers. These estimates are robust to a range of econometric techniques including panel smooth threshold regression.

Provides a comprehensive survey of the East Asian bond markets, identifies best practices for fostering their development, and presents a broad agenda for further reforms. East Asia's spectacular economic performance over the past several decades has been marked by macroeconomic stability, consistent growth, low inflation, the lowering of trade barriers, and an overall improvement in living standards. The region now has a well developed banking system and boasts four of the top 20 stock markets in the world. Its bond markets, however, are relatively small and at an early stage of development. This report provides a comprehensive survey of the East Asian bond markets, identifies best practices for fostering their development, and presents a broad agenda of reforms for their further development. The report, which is based on studies of bond markets in China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, finds great diversity among those markets. It was presented at the Emerging Asian Bond Market Conference, co-sponsored by the World Bank and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and held in Hong Kong, June 26-27, 1995. It is believed that with the proper institutional prerequisites in place, the markets will grow very rapidly and become a leading source of financing for the region. "The [study] and this conference mark the World Bank's increasing support and participation in the development of bond markets in the region." --Joseph Yam, Chief Executive, Hong Kong Monetary Authority

This paper estimates the impact of foreign participation in determining long-term local currency government bond yields and volatility in a group of emerging markets from 2000-2009. The results of a panel data analysis of 10 emerging markets show that greater foreign participation in the domestic government bond market tends to significantly reduce long-term government yields. Moreover, greater foreign participation does not necessarily result in increased volatility in bond yields in emerging markets and, in fact, could even dampen volatility in some instances.