A Variance-Ratio Test of Random Walk in International Stock Markets

Abstract

Over the past several decades, researchers in finance, economics and other related fields conduct extensive studies to examine whether stock prices follow random walk. They, using various statistical techniques, often document mixed findings. In this paper, we test random walk hypothesis using the relatively fresh data, 34 MSCI country indexes from January 5, 1988 to December 28, 2010. We find that majority of these markets (25 out of 34 markets) follow random walk. Results, however, indicate that 4 out of 9 emerging and developing countries follow non-random walk.