The development of e-commerce, facilitated by the rapid advances made in information and communications technology, as a new market system is important to the economic growth and continued competitiveness of the ASEAN countries.
E-commerce equity investment is a new phenomenon in the financial markets. This paper reviews the development of e-commerce as a market and its implications for the equity capital market as a primary source of funding for
e-commerce business ventures in the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) region. The factors contributing to the developments in the ecommerce equity markets are identified, analysed and the issues and implications for valuation of e-commerce stocks are discussed and explained using a recent approach to econometric specification, including stationarity tests and cointegration modelling. This paper also provides an empirical analysis of some
other important issues in the e-commerce financial market such as market efficiency, volatility and predictability. It draws on the Australian findings of various economic variables that influence Australian e-commerce stock returns. The empirical findings of the Australian study will be extrapolated and used for policy inferences in ASEAN countries.