How do stock markets in emerging economies respond to World Bank loan approvals?

This paper examines the impact of World Bank loan approvals on equity markets in borrowing countries. We exploit a rich dataset with World Bank loan commitments and daily stock market returns for 47 emerging markets, allowing us to study short run market reactions to news about World Bank programs. These programs fall into three categories: investment projects, structural adjustment loans that tie future macroeconomic reforms to future loan disbursements (prior to FY2006), and development policy loans that reward completed macroeconomic reforms with current loan disbursements (since FY2006). Event study analysis shows positive abnormal stock market returns on the trading day following investment project loan announcements. The effect depends on loan size as well as market characteristics. Structural adjustment loan announcements are followed by negative abnormal returns; development policy loan announcements, in contrast, are considered good news. This suggests that expected macroeconomic implications of policy change in response to loan conditions drive market reactions, and that changes in the conditionality and disbursement structure of World Bank policy lending were successful in improving market reactions to World Bank programs.