Volume 56, Issue 2 p. 279-299
ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Expectations and financial markets: Lessons from Brexit

Chen Gu

Corresponding Author

Chen Gu

Shanghai Business School, Research Center of Finance, Shanghai, China

Correspondence

Chen Gu, Shanghai Business School, Research Center of Finance, 2271 West Zhongshan Rd, Room 1410, Shanghai 200235, China.

Email: chengu1031@126.com

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Ann Marie Hibbert

Ann Marie Hibbert

Department of Finance, John Chambers College of Business and Economics, West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia

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First published: 18 August 2020
Citations: 9

Abstract

We use the setting of Brexit to investigate how financial markets react to news about political events. We provide robust evidence that political risk is priced by equity markets globally. Furthermore, commodity, government bonds, and currency markets are also affected by political uncertainty. However, our intraday results reveal that markets respond very quickly to political news as changes in the probability of Brexit was impounded into equity prices within 5 min. Our findings also show that investor attention significantly influences the link between the market's expectations of political events and asset prices.

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