The prospects of BRIC countries: Testing weak-form market efficiency

• We examine whether BRIC equity markets are weak form efficient in the recent years.
• We use data including recent crisis and compare with developed benchmark.
• The findings reflect that the markets reveal a state of being fairly weak-form efficient.

The main purpose of the study is to determine whether the equity markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) may be considered weak-form efficient in recent years. The major findings using daily data and a bias-free statistical technique with a sample spanning from September 1995 to March 2010 indicate that the results from the last sub-periods, including the subprime crisis, support the belief that these markets may have been approaching a state of being fairly weak-form efficient, which reflects the future prospects of BRIC countries.

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