Military regimes and stock market performance

We examine whether military regimes harm stock market performance by investigating stock returns in ten emerging markets under military and civilian rule. We find no evidence of military regimes having a significantly negative impact on stock returns. In the case of Thailand and Pakistan, we find a significant positive military return premium. These returns cannot be explained by economic cycles, stock market cycles, or returns volatility. Our findings are robust to worldwide stock market movements, tests for spurious regression bias and randomization-bootstrap tests. Our results contradict the common view that military rule has a negative impact on stock market performance. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.