Emerging markets

Since the 18th century, the western world has gone through political and economic alterations. Gold has been of economic importance over thousands of years in several civilisations. It gained international economic significance during the 19th century, when several countries officially adopted the Gold Standard. With the world becoming more intertwined, gold has found new importance for economies and investors alike. It has been a safe haven during a time of economic crisis which has been reflected on its price. This paper examines the development of gold in a changing global, political and economic environment. For investors it has become a safe haven during the crisis, but how reliable is gold? How far can investors predict gold’s worth in times of crisis and what kind of crises drives gold? The interplay of global players, governments, their policies, currency strategies and large private investors have complicated the predictability of the gold price. Hence, the present study is aimed to analyze the reliability of gold when countries are headed into crises as well as economic and political impacts on the gold price, using content and data analysis method based on library resources<strong>.</strong>

The present study investigated weak-form market information efficiency in Tehran security exchange (TSE) as an emerging market and in Dow Jones United States security exchange (DJUS) as a developed market based on random walk model. In each market, the random walk model was examined using daily and monthly returns of a set of indices. The results of the parametric and non-parametric tests indicated that the daily returns are not independent and identically distributed in TSE. Moreover, according to the results of the variance ratio test, a trending behavior in daily returns and mean-reversion behavior in monthly returns were observed. In DJUS, however, the daily returns were found to be independent and identically distributed and the results of variance ratio test did not confirm that the returns follow a particular pattern in this market.