ROLE OF CULTURE AND MACROECONOMIC SHOCKS IN DRIVING HERDING BEHAVIOR: EVIDENCE FROM DEVELOPED, EMERGING AND FRONTIER STOCK MARKETS

Abstract

The basic purpose of this research is to investigate herding behavior, the role of culture, the effect of macroeconomic shocks on herding behavior, and the existence of contagion of herding due to the crisis and extreme shocks in the market. This study investigates the herding behavior towards market consensus in a set of Developed, Emerging and Frontier Markets of Asia, Asia Pacific and Europe. For the identification of herding behavior towards market consensus this study employs return dispersion models and the state space model. The time variation in herding behavior is identified by estimating return dispersion model through Kalman filter estimation. One of the main objective of this research is to determine the role of culture in driving herding behavior. This study employs Hofstede’s six cultural dimensions of culture and introduces them as an explanatory variable in the return dispersion model. This study utilizes ARIMA residuals of macroeconomic variables and introduce them in state space model to figure out the effect of unexpected shocks of this variable on investor herding behavior. This study focuses on behavioral link namely contagion of herding (pure contagion) in a given set of market and determines the cross country linkages of each market with a global leader (US) through extreme shocks in macroeconomic components or crisis. For the said purpose conditional correlation between herding measures is generated through diagonal VECH bivariate GARCH (1,1) model. The major findings of the study report significant effect of herding behavior in the majority of the markets. state space model measure provide better results for all measure. Culture play a significant role in the determination of herding behavior. The presence of cultural dimensions changes the magnitude of the herding behavior in sample countries. The herding behavior of investor is affected by some macroeconomic shocks hitting the specific market. But macroeconomic shocks do not seem to play a major role in defining herding behavior in most of the markets. Majority of the markets exhibit a strong correlation with US market which is seen as turning vii points of herding measure during a global financial crisis of 2007-2009. This correlation also increased due to some specific macroeconomic shocks. This study provides a complete analytical framework in developed emerging and frontier markets of Asia, Asia Pacific and Europe, where economic, cultural, behavioral and external factors are simultaneously integrated to provide a better explanation of herding behavior. Therefore, in its unique design, this research is an attempt towards bridging a gap between, cultural finance, behavioral finance, and standard finance. Keywords: Herding Behavior, Cultural Dimensions, Macroeconomic Shocks, Financial Crisis, Contagion of Herding.