This paper investigates the nature of the stock market linkages in the advanced Asia-Pacific stock markets of Australia, Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore with the U.S and the information leadership of the U.S. and Japan in the region since the early 1990s. It has been found that both the contemporaneous return and volatility linkages were significant and tended to be more intense after the 1997 Asian crisis period. However, the investigation of the dynamic information spillover effects in terms of returns, volatility and trading volume from the U.S. and Japan did not produce such time-varying influence. In general, significant dynamic information spillover effects from the U.S. were found in all the Asia-Pacific markets, but the Japanese information flows were relatively weak and the effects were country specific.

This paper investigates the nature of information leadership of the U.S. and Japan in the advanced Asia-Pacific stock markets. Instead of just relying on return and return volatility spillovers from major markets, specific and disaggregated news events are also utilized. In particular, the aim is to examine the nature of spillover effects of scheduled announcements of the U.S. and Japanese macroeconomic variables in the advanced Asia-Pacific stock markets of Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore for the period 2 January 1991 to 31 May 1999. The investigation reveals that both U.S. and Japanese announcement news elicit significant first and second moment influences on the returns of the other markets, in general, and that there is a complex array of significant market responses to various news announcements. There is also strong evidence of markets responding differently to bad news announcements compared to overall news (including both good and bad news) announcements which indicate that the information content of each economic announcement is a source of tradable information rather than the act of releasing economic figures. Thus, this paper contributes to the literature by shedding light on the important drivers of the documented information leadership of the U.S. and Japanese stock markets.

This volume of "International Finance Review" focuses on the Asia-Pacific financial markets. A total of 22 original papers, not published elsewhere, have been selected from a competitive field. These papers utilize a variety of methods, including theoretical, empirical and qualitative to highlight a range of issues across the region. Several papers offer combinations of these different categories and among the empirical papers, there are a wide variety of datasets analyzed. While China does play a significant part in the analysis of five of the papers in this volume (this is to be expected given its importance in the region), a host of other countries are also considered. This ensures the volume is truly international in its scope. These papers each serve to contribute to the knowledge on a particular issue related to the financial markets within this region and for this volume, three main issues have been identified: integration, innovation and challenges. Articles are contributed by experts in their fields. It is truly international in scope.

The process of Asia's rise to a position of eminence in global finance has accelerated in the wake of the international financial crisis. This volume intends to explore and understand the dynamics created by this process of transition.

Up-to-Date Research Sheds New Light on This Area Taking into account the ongoing worldwide financial crisis, Stock Market Volatility provides insight to better understand volatility in various stock markets. This timely volume is one of the first to draw on a range of international authorities who offer their expertise on market volatility in devel

This book focuses on the tremendous shift in both economic growth and development progress taking place towards the Asia-Pacific Region. Each of the countries in the region has various concerns and challenges for its sustainable development, a common goal most of them are trying to achieve at the moment. Interestingly, sustainable development in the region may be critical for achieving sustainable development at the global level as well. With a limited mandate, the book covers some specific developmental issues of ‘the hot spots’ of APR that are regarded to be contributing to their sustainable development. The book also looks at the formation and strengthening of some economic and financial initiatives with the potentials to affect growth and influence economic cooperation and integration of the countries in the region.