3/5/20: Financial Strength Across Emerging Markets

A somewhat simplified, but nonetheless telling heat map of financial strengths and vulnerabilities across emerging market/middle income economies via the Economist:

I have outlined European economies included (for some strange reason, the Baltics are not in the assessment, neither are Bulgaria, Moldova, etc). The top 9 as well as those ranked 11th, 12th and 15th are economies with no risk category at or below 'moderate'.  The bottom 15 have no risk category within a 'safety' zone.

Have fun with these...

29/6/2014: London Property Markets: A Safe Haven After All

A fascinatingly interesting study looking into London property markets from the point of view of safe haven properties. Badarinza, Cristian and Ramadorai, Tarun, "Preferred Habitats and Safe-Haven Effects: Evidence from the London Housing Market" (April 17, 2014, http://ssrn.com/abstract=2353124) uses "a new cross-sectional approach, motivated by the insight that investors may have different "preferred habitats" within a broad asset class."

The study deploys this strategy "on large databases of historical housing transactions in London, finding that economic and political risk in Southern Europe, China, the Middle East, Russia, and South Asia helps explain price and volume dynamics in the London housing market over the past two decades. Safe-haven effects on the London housing market are long-lasting and significant, but temporary. The method also uncovers intriguing insights about cross-country variation in preferred habitats within London."