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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