Size Matters: The Impact of Capital Market Liberalization on Individual Firms

Abstract

We attempt to answer the following questions: What are the revaluation effects and the impact on performance, volatility, and return correlation from stock market liberalization in emerging markets? These questions have been studied extensively at the market-level but not at the firm level. Our results show significantly different impact of stock market liberalization across firms. Large firms tend to exhibit large revaluation effects, insignificant change in performance, large declines in volatility, and insignificant change in correlation from liberalization. Small firms show small revaluation effects, improved performance, smaller decline in volatility and decreases in correlation after liberalization. These results hold after controlling for movements in world stock returns, concurrent economic reforms and macroeconomic fundamentals. They are also robust to the length of the liberalization window. Our results have important implications for international investors seeking to manage their global exposure as well as for policy makers considering capital market liberalization.