The rule of law variable is significant in three out of four specifications. It is not significant by itself but is significant at the 5% level when we also control for reserves. This coefficient implies that a one point better score on the rule of law index is associated with ten percentage points’ better stock market performance. The coefficient declines to just over seven and the significance level falls to 10% when we control for East Asia and when we include both the East Asia dummy and reserves.
The corporate governance variable is significant until we bring in the East Asia dummy. The coefficient is over 12 and the R-squared rises to 0.22 when we include reserves. Interestingly, with the East Asia dummy included, reserves have the right sign: an $10 billion of reserves implies a 4% better stock market performance. However, this is the only significant stock market result for reserves.
Neither anti-director rights nor accounting standards are significant in the stock market regressions, even if we multiply these measures with the indices representing legal institutions. Creditor rights actually have a significant negative coefficient in the stock market regression for 1997–98, implying that countries with better protection for creditors experience worse stock market performance, although this coefficient loses its significance when we include the East Asia dummy.
6.3. Robustness checks
Using December 1998 as the ending point for our sample does not change the essence of the results. The macroeconomic variables are still not significant, with the exception of the fiscal policy variable, which consistently has the wrong sign. The same three legal variables remain robustly significant.
Controlling for money growth in 1996 does not affect the results. Corruption and corporate governance remain significant, as does the rule of law (if we also include reserves). Money growth is not significant in any specification. The same results hold if we control for money growth while dropping Turkey.
If we control for log GDP per capita and reserves in the corruption regression, the independent variables are jointly significant, but none of the variables are individually significant. In the same regression for rule of law, only the level of reserves is significant (but with a negative sign.) Judicial efficiency, the Flemings corporate governance measure, and the measure of anti-director rights are not significant. Log GDP per capita is significant in several specifications; given that it is highly correlated with the general legal environment, it could be picking up the strength of some institutions (although probably not anti-director rights).
The stock market results for measures of investor protection are more dependent on outliers than is the case for our exchange rate results. In particular, if we drop Indonesia, the rule of law result is unchanged, but corruption and the corporate governance variable lose their significance. However, it should be kept in mind that we are missing data on two countries in all the stock market regressions. Russia, a country with very weak investor protection, had a large fall in its stock market (on the order of Indonesia) but joined the IFC index only in November 1997, so we do not have the requisite stock market information. Russia's IFC Investable Index fell 84.2% in 1998 (IFC, 1999); the change in this index for 1997 is not available. The Czech Republic has struggled to establish investor protection, but only by 1997 was beginning to institute a reasonable set of safeguards (Glaeser et al., 2001). Its stock market (measured by the IFC's Investable Index) fell 22% in 1997 and only 7.3% in 1998. If Russia and the Czech Republic were included, our results would be stronger and the dependence on Indonesia reduced.
Our results show that ex post returns including the crash of 1997–98 are lower where institutions are weaker and where there is, as a result, more risk. This is not inconsistent with the argument that ex ante expected returns in the stock market should be higher where governance is weaker. We do not have evidence about expected returns before the crisis in these markets.