MEAN AND VOLATILITY SPILLOVERS ACROSS MAJOR NATIONAL STOCK MARKETS: FURTHER EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE

This paper provides additional insight into the nature and degree of interdependence of stock markets of the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Germany, and it reports the extent to which volatility in these markets influences expected returns. The analysis uses the multivariate GARCH-M model. Although they are considered weak, statistically significant mean spillovers radiate from stock markets of the U.S. to the U.K., Canada, and Germany, and then from the stock markets of Japan to Germany. No relation is found between conditional market volatility and expected returns. Strong time-varying conditional volatility exists in the return series of all markets. The own-volatility spillovers in the U.K. and Canadian markets are insignificant, supporting the view that conditional volatility of returns in these markets is “imported” from abroad, specifically from the U.S. Significant volatility spillovers radiate from the U.S. stock market to all four stock markets, from the U.K. stock market to the Canadian stock market, and from the German stock market to the Japanese stock market. The results are robust and no changes occur in the correlation structure of returns over time.     

Return and Volatility Spillovers and Cojump Behavior Between the U.S. and Korean Stock Markets

ABSTRACT

In this study, we examine return spillover, volatility transmission, and cojump behavior between the U.S. and Korean stock markets. In particular, we focus on cojump behavior between the two markets in order to explain the transmission of unexpected shocks. We find that the U.S. stock market causes return spillover effects in the Korean stock market, and there is significant volatility transmission between the two markets. Importantly, we find a stronger association in size, as compared with intensity, of cojumps between the U.S. and Korean stock markets, particularly during the recent financial crisis.     

Spreading the fear: The central role of CBOE VIX in global stock market uncertainty

Construction of efficient portfolios is reliant on understanding the correlation between assets. If correlations change markedly during times of economic turmoil then investors are exposed to greater risk at the most inopportune time. We examine the linkages between global stock markets using measures of market uncertainty (implied volatility). Using a sample of daily changes in G7 and BRIC implied volatility measures, over a 20-year sample period, we demonstrate that uncertainty in U.S. markets plays a pivotal role in global stock market uncertainty. “Fear is spread” across markets, as heightened uncertainty in U.S. markets is transmitted across global markets. Conversely, changes in global market uncertainty do not explain changes in U.S. market uncertainty. While there is a clear increase in connectedness during crisis periods, we observe a disparity in the way that inter-dependencies change during the two major economic crises in our sample period; the GFC (2007–2009) and COVID-pandemic (2020). The additional importance of US news largely drives our results during the GFC, while the effect is spread among several countries (particularly within European markets) during COVID.     

Transmission of Stock Returns and Volatility between the U.S. and Japan: Evidence from the Stock Index Futures Markets

In this paper, we examine the nature of transmission of stock returns and volatility between the U.S. and Japanese stock markets using futures prices on the S&P 500 and Nikkei 225 stock indexes. We use stock index futures prices to mitigate the stale quote problem found in the spot index prices and to obtain more robust results. By employing a two-step GARCH approach, we find that there are unidirectional contemporaneous return and volatility spillovers from the U.S. to Japan. Furthermore, the U.S.'s influence on Japan in returns is approximately four times as large as the other way around. Finally, our results show no significant lagged spillover effects in both returns and volatility from the Osaka market to the Chicago market, while a significant lagged volatility spillover is observed from the U.S. to Japan. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Global financial crisis and emerging stock market contagion: A volatility impulse response function approach

By employing the volatility impulse response (VIRF) approach, this paper presents a general framework for addressing the extent of contagion effects between the BRICSs’ and U.S. stock markets and how the BRICSs’ stock markets have been influenced in the context of the 2007–2009 global financial crisis. Our empirical results show during the period of 2007–2009 global financial crisis, there are significant contagion effects from the U.S. to the BRICSs’ stock markets. Yet, the degree of stock market reactions to such shocks differs from one market to another, depending on the level of integration with the international economy. Besides, the strengthened degree of stock market integration among the U.S. and BRICS has adverse effect such that if the 2007–2009 global financial crisis occurs today it may result in heavier impact on stock market volatility nowadays compared to the crisis-era.     

Spillover and Cojumps Between the U.S. and Chinese Stock Markets

There is an urgent need to understand the spillover and cojump effects between the U.S. and Chinese stock markets. The paper finds that since July 2005, the U.S. stock market has caused short-run spillover effects on returns on the Chinese stock market. More specifically, price changes in the United States can be used to predict both closing-to-opening and closing-to-closing returns on the Chinese stock market on the next day. However, there is no significant volatility spillover between the two markets. Both markets have shown stronger cojump behavior since the subprime crisis. The return relationships between the two stock markets are robust.     

U.S. Equity Investment in Emerging Stock Markets

This article examines U.S. equity flows to emerging stock marketsfrom 1978 to 1991 and draws three main conclusions. First, despitethe recent increase in U.S. equity investment in emerging stockmarkets, the U.S. portfolio remains strongly biased toward domesticequities. Second, of the fraction of the U.S. portfolio thatis allocated to foreign equity investment, the share investedin emerging stock markets is roughly proportional to the shareof the emerging stock markets in the global market capitalizationvalue. Third, the volatility of U.S. transactions in emerging-marketequities is higher than in other foreign equities. The normalizedvolatility of U.S. transactions appears to be falling over time,however, and we find no relation between the volume of U.S.transactions in foreign equity and local turnover rates or volatilityof stock returns.     

Common Volatility: An Empirical Investigation of Closed-End Country Funds

The study of international integration of equity markets has received a great deal of interest. This paper investigates whether returns of forty-one closed-end country funds share a common volatility process with three comparable return series: the underlying net asset value (NAV), U.S. stock market returns, and foreign stock market returns. Country funds are a natural setting to test for international market integration, as they are traded in the U.S. market, whereas their underlying assets are traded in foreign stock markets. Our results indicate that only a few emerging markets' country funds share common volatility processes with their comparable asset returns. This, in turn, suggests weak linkages through the second moment of related assets.     

Circuit Breakers,Trading Collars,and Volatility Transmission Across Markets: Evidence from NYSE Rule 80A

The NYSE's Rule 80A attempted to delink the futures and equity markets by limiting index arbitrage trades in the same direction as the last trade to reduce stock market volatility. Rule 80A leads to a small but statistically significant decline in intraday U.S. equity market volatility. In addition, the results are asymmetric: volatility is dampened more in a rising market than in a declining one. These results suggest that, to a limited extent, rule restrictions on trading can sufficiently delink the futures and equity markets enough to reduce the transmission of volatility.     

Sentiment and stock market connectedness: Evidence from the U.S. – China trade war

We assess the impact of monthly and daily investor sentiment on stock market return and volatility connectedness during the U.S.-China trade war period. Our analyses focus on the connectedness between the two economies and their major trading partners. We also investigate the asymmetric impact of sentiment on volatility connectedness by exploring the upside and downside markets separately. We consistently document a negative relationship between investor sentiment and stock market connectedness for both return and volatility. We further confirm that investor sentiment exerts a larger impact on volatility connectedness in the downside market compared to the upside market.     

Is VIX an investor fear gauge in BRIC equity markets?

This study examines the intertemporal relationships between CBOE market volatility index (VIX) and stock market returns in Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC), and between VIX and U.S. stock market returns, to uncover if VIX serves as an investor fear gauge in BRIC and U.S. markets. We conduct the VIX-returns analysis for the 1993–2007 period.Our results suggest a strong negative contemporaneous relation between daily changes (innovations) in VIX and U.S. stock market returns. This relation is stronger when VIX is higher and more volatile. A significant negative contemporaneous relation between VIX and equity returns also exists for China and Brazil during 1993–2007 and for India during 1993–1997. Similar to the U.S. market, the immediate negative relation between the Brazilian stock returns and VIX changes is much stronger when VIX is both high and more volatile. Our results also indicate a strong asymmetric relation between innovations in VIX and daily stock market returns in U.S., Brazil, and China, suggesting that VIX is more of a gauge of investor fear than investor positive sentiment. However, the asymmetric relationship between stock market returns and VIX is much weaker when VIX is large and more volatile. These results have potential implications for portfolio diversification and for stock market and option trading timing in the equity markets of Brazil, India, and China. Overall, our results indicate that VIX is not only an investor fear gauge for the U.S. stock market but also for the equity markets of China, Brazil, and India.     

Time and frequency dynamics of connectedness and hedging performance in global stock markets: Bitcoin versus conventional hedges

Some studies have revealed the hedging ability of Bitcoin against stock markets, but the knowledge of how it compares with other hedges is in its infancy. This paper presents the first study on time-frequency domain connectedness and hedging among five hedges (Bitcoin, crude oil, commodities, gold and the U.S. dollar (USD) index) and four stock indices (developed markets ex U.S., emerging markets ex China, U.S. and China). We find that the connectedness between hedges and stock markets varies by time across time horizons. Specifically, the connectedness between Bitcoin and stock indices is the smallest among all hedges, especially for the short horizon. Gold and USD are isolated from other markets at longer horizons. The hedging ratio, optimal portfolio weights and hedging effectiveness also vary across investment horizons. For short-term investment, gold has better hedging effectiveness, especially for emerging stock markets and the U.S. stock market. For median- and long-term investment, USD has better performance, especially for developed markets ex U.S. and emerging stock markets. Additionally, although Bitcoin has good hedging properties, it has high volatility compared with other hedging assets. In other words, if Bitcoin is included in a portfolio, investors should pay attention to its wide variation. These empirical findings highlight the important role that gold and USD play in hedging against global stock markets.     

Volatility Spillovers and Contagion During the Asian Crisis: Evidence from Six Southeast Asian Stock Markets

Using a multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH-M) model, we investigate volatility spillovers in six Southeast Asian stock markets around the time of the 1997 Asian crisis. We focus on interactions with the U.S. market as a world financial market, and with the Japanese market as a regional financial market. We also use bivariate GARCH-M models to examine the behavior of individual markets and their interactions with other markets in the region. All models lend support to the idea of the "Asian contagion," which started in Thailand and rapidly spread to other markets.     

Volatility Spillovers, Comovements and Contagion in Securitized Real Estate Markets

This paper analyzes the relationships between local and global securitized real estate markets, but also between securitized real estate and common stock markets. First, the volatility transmissions across markets are examined using an asymmetric t-BEKK (Baba-Engle-Kraft-Kroner) specification of their covariance matrix. Second, correlations from that model and tail dependences estimated using a time-varying copula framework are analyzed to assess whether different dynamics underlie the comovements in the whole distribution and those in the tails. Third, we investigate market contagion by testing for structural changes in the tail dependences. We use data for the U.S., the U.K. and Australia for the period 1990–2010 as a basis for our analyses. Spillover effects are found to be the largest in the U.S., both domestically and internationally. Further, comovements in tail distributions between markets appear to be quite important. We also document different dynamics between the conditional tail dependences and correlations. Finally, we find evidence of market contagion between the U.S. and the U.K. markets following the subprime crisis.     

中国股市羊群效应的区制转移时变性研究

传统研究采用静态CCK模型检验股票市场的羊群效应,但无法描述羊群行为的动态变化以及市场可能受到的外部影响。本文基于中国股市日频交易数据,在静态CCK模型中引入参数的区制转移性质识别股市在不同状态间的转换,并分析中国股市羊群效应和交叉羊群效应的时变特征。研究表明,中国股市运行周期可被划分为两个区制,分别呈现低波动和高波动的行情特征;羊群效应的程度随区制转移而变化,具有区制依存性。其中,沪深股市在高(低)波动区制中,羊群效应更强(弱),相应区制持续时间较短(长);中国台湾股市仅在高波动区制中出现羊群效应,相应区制持续时间较短;中国香港股市无论在低波动区制或是高波动区制中,均不存在羊群效应。此外,沪深A股在低波动区制中对美国股市和中国香港股市存在交叉羊群效应。     

Words matter: Market responses to changes in U.S. and Chinese trade-related internet search frequency under different U.S. administrations

This paper employs internet search frequency data as a proxy for investor interest in innovations in stock market volatility surrounding the U.S./China trade relationship. The study documents a positive correlation between U.S. and China trade-related investor attention and market-wide share-price volatility in both nations—especially during the Trump administration. In addition, the study confirms previously established volatility spillover effects between U.S. and Chinese markets, which, again, are strongest during the Trump presidency. Overall, the results of the study support the validity of using publicly-available internet search data as a proxy for investor attention.     

Asymmetric volatility spillovers between economic policy uncertainty and stock markets: Evidence from China

This study explores the spillovers between economic policy uncertainty (EPU) and stock market realized volatility (RV). The monthly index of Chinese and US EPU and RV are used to analyze the pairwise directional spillovers. We find that RV is a net receiver that is more vulnerable to shocks from U.S. EPU than to shocks from Chinese EPU. We further decompose the RV into good and bad volatility to test the asymmetric spillover effect between the stock market and EPU. The results suggest that EPU has a bigger effect on bad volatility in the stock market throughout most of the sample period. However, we find that good volatility spillovers become larger during periods of stimulated reform, whereas bad volatility spillovers become larger during periods of international disputes. We show that Chinese stock market volatility is sensitive to both U.S. and Chinese EPU and that the spillover is asymmetric in different periods.     

What drives U.S. financial sector volatility? A Bayesian model averaging perspective

We investigate the driving forces behind the quarterly stock price volatility of firms in the U.S. financial sector over the period from 1990 to 2017. The driving forces represent a set of 28 economic indicators that are routinely used to detect financial instability and crises and correspond to the development of the financial, monetary, real, trade and fiscal sector as well as to the development of the bond and equity markets. The dimensionality and model choice uncertainty are addressed using Bayesian model averaging, which led to the identification of only seven variables that tend to systematically drive the stock price volatility of financial firms in the U.S.: housing prices, short-term interest rates, net national savings, default yield spread, and three credit market variables. We also confirm that our results are not an artefact of volatility associated with market downturns (for negative semi-volatility), as the results are similar even when market volatility is associated with market upsurge (positive semi-volatility). Given the identified drivers, our results provide supporting empirical evidence that dampening credit cycles might lead to decreased volatility in the financial sector.     

Shiller's CAPE: Market Efficiency and Risk

Robert Shiller shows that Cyclically Adjusted Price to Earnings Ratio (CAPE) is strongly associated with future long‐term stock returns. This is often interpreted as evidence of market inefficiency. We present two findings contrary to such an interpretation. First, if markets are efficient, stock returns should be higher than the risk‐free rate. We find that even when CAPE is in its ninth decile, future 10‐year stock returns, on average, are higher than future returns on 10‐year U.S. Treasurys. Thus, the results are largely consistent with market efficiency. Second, consistent with a risk–return tradeoff, we find that CAPE is negatively associated with future stock market volatility.     

Volatility Reversion and Correlation Structure of Returns in Major International Stock Markets

This paper investigates the stochastic behavior of weekly stock market returns in the U.S., Japan, and the U.K. during the period 1984 to 1994. The analysis is carried out using an augmented version of Bollerslev's [7] multivariate GARCH model with structural dummies to test for differences in the mean, volatility, and covariance structure of returns during the pre- and post-October 1987 crash periods. In addition, the paper explores the issue of the volatility reversion and time-varying behavior of correlation structure of returns in these markets. Mean-spillovers exist from the U.S. and Japan to the U.K. The magnitude of these spillovers is, however, low. Volatility spillovers exist from the U.S. and, to a lesser extent, from Japan to the U.K. Mean returns in all three markets and volatility in Japan and the U.K. are the same during the two periods, while volatility in the U.S. is lower during the post-crash period. With the exception of the correlation of returns between Japan and the U.K., which has doubled since the October 1987 crash, the remaining correlations are statistically similar during the two periods. Simulations performed indicate that volatility is reverting in the sense that, when it departs from its long-run equilibrium level, it tends to revert back to that level.