Abstract

The major objective of this book is to contribute to the present state of knowledge by exploring empirical links between the processes of diffusion of financial innovations— exchange-traded funds—and growing deployment of ICT across Asia-Pacific countries, between 2004 and 2017. We examine the evolutionary patterns of ETFs on selected Asia-Pacific stock exchanges and verify the hypothesized relationship between increasing ICT penetration and development of the ETFs markets. More specifically, this study is based on 12 economies from the Asia-Pacific region, namely, Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. We exhaustively discuss various issues related to ETFs, and, throughout the empirical parts of the book, we show their diffusion patterns on the selected financial markets in the Asia-Pacific region. In contrast with the existing literature, which concentrates mostly on the benefits and costs of ETFs for investors, we focus on the development of the ETFs markets (used as synonymous term to the diffusion of ETFs); thus we adopt a broader approach to the topic. Financial instruments used for comparison are innovative ones, i.e., ETFs, and conventional ones (more widely recognized and available for a much longer time period), i.e., stock index futures and stock index options. Next, to ensure a broad perspective for the analyzed process of development of financial innovations, we additionally provide the in-depth evidence on relationships between ICT penetration and diffusion of innovative financial instruments— ETFs, across countries in scope.

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Authors (3)