Financial Integration of Large- and Small-Cap Stocks in Emerging Markets

This study examines the financial integration of large- and small-cap stocks in twenty-three emerging markets to determine their degree of market integration with the world market. The international asset pricing model cannot be rejected for most large-cap stock portfolios, but it is rejected for small-cap stock portfolios. The findings also demonstrate that super-large-cap stocks have the fewest pricing errors and their global financial integration has increased in recent years. In sum, the empirical results indicate that global market integration is primarily associated with the super-large-cap stocks of large emerging markets.     

Money Market Integration

We use transaction-level data and detailed modeling of the high-frequency behavior of federal funds–Eurodollar spreads to provide evidence of strong integration of the U.S. markets for federal funds and Eurodollars, the two core components of the dollar money market. Our evidence of negligible federal funds–Eurodollar premia contrasts with previous findings of large and predictable premia, which have been interpreted as evidence of segmentation between the markets for federal funds and Eurodollars. Our results, however, are consistent with possible persistent segmentation within the global Eurodollar market. We document several patterns in the behavior of federal funds–Eurodollar spreads, including liquidity effects from trading volume to yield spreads' volatility.     

Sources of Capital Market Segmentation: Empirical Evidence from Finland

Because Finland has experienced profound economic changes and financial deregulation since the mid‐1980s, we use it as a laboratory to explore issues related to time‐varying global equity market integration. Using a Finnish perspective, we construct two different portfolios of Finnish firms and a conditional one‐factor international asset pricing model. We examine whether the segmentation varies over time and across assets. We use time‐series variables for changing market integration (lagged foreign equity ownership, difference between Finnish and German short‐term interest rates, and a portfolio‐specific liquidity measure) and crosssectional variables (size and book‐to‐market ratios and industry sector) to show variation in integration.     

The global financial crisis and integration in European retail banking

The aim of this paper is twofold. Firstly, to investigate the integration process within the European Union retail banking sector by analysing deposit and lending rates to the household sector during the period 2003–2011. Secondly, to assess the impact of the 2008 global financial crisis on the banking integration process, an area that is yet unexplored. An important contribution of the paper is the application of the recently developed Phillips and Sul (2007a) panel convergence methodology which has not hitherto been employed in this area. This method analyses the degree as well as the speed of convergence, identifies the presence of club formation, and measures the behaviour of each country’s transition path relative to the panel average. The empirical results point to the presence of convergence in all deposit and lending rates to the household sector up to 2007. In sharp contrast, the null of convergence is rejected in all deposit and credit markets after the onset of the 2008 financial crisis. These results show that the global crisis has had a detrimental effect on the banking integration process. We find some convergence in a few sub-clusters of countries but the rate of convergence is typically slow and several countries are identified as diverging altogether. In addition, we find that the credit market, in general, is far more heterogeneous than the savings market.     

Is the UAE stock market integrated with the USA stock market? New evidence from asymmetric causality testing

The integration and development of financial markets is an important issue because it can result in economic growth via increasing exchange and more efficient allocation of scarce resources. It is also important for defining and conducting appropriate policies to counteract adverse spill-over effects across markets. The main goal of this paper is to assess the degree of integration or segmentation of the UAE stock market with the USA market by conducting new causality tests developed by Hatemi-J (forthcoming) that separate the effect of positive shocks from the negative ones. The empirical results based on standard symmetric causality tests indicate that the UAE market is segmented from the USA market. However, when the asymmetric causality tests are implemented the results reveal clearly that the UAE market is indeed integrated with the USA market. These results show, in addition, that the degree of integration is stronger when the markets are falling than rising.     

Intermarket efficiency: An application of interbattery APT to mortgage-backed securities

Increasing popularity of investments in mortgage-backed securities has led to closer integration of the mortgage market into traditional capital markets. Using monthly returns during 1982–1988 for common stocks, Treasury bonds and GNMA and FHLMC mortgage-backed securities, the interbattery factor analytic Arbitrage Pricing Theory of (Cho, 1984) is used to test five hypotheses for intramarket and intermarket integration. Results indicate that three to five common factors are found within the same security market, while only one to three factors are found common between different markets.The APT could not be rejected within the same security market, but was rejected in most intermarket comparisons. While risk-free rates are found to differ between markets, the risk premium tests are conclusive indicators of integration. Our results support claims that the stock, bond, and the mortgage-backed securities markets are integrated.     

Interbank Market Integration under Asymmetric Information

Cross-country bank lending appears to be subject to market imperfectionsleading to persistent interest rate differentials. In a modelwhere banks need to cope with liquidity shocks by borrowingor by liquidating assets, we study the scope for internationalinterbank market integration with unsecured lending when cross-countryinformation is noisy. We find that an equilibrium with integratedmarkets need not always exist, and that it may coexist withone characterized by segmentation. A repo market reduces interestrate spreads and improves upon the segmentation equilibrium.However, it may destroy the unsecured integrated equilibrium.     

Asian financial integration: Global or regional? Evidence from money and bond markets

This paper investigates the degree of global versus regional financial integration in Southeast Asia during the period 2004–2012. We examine integration in the money and bond markets in Asia by employing a covered-interest-parity-based measure of financial integration. The impact of the 2008 financial crisis as well as the recent regional bond initiatives on the integration process of Asian money and bond markets respectively are specifically investigated. Empirically, we adopt the Phillips and Sul (2007) convergence methodology that has not been previously employed to examine the integration process in Asian money and bond markets. We find evidence of both global and regional integration in the money market pre 2008 but once the crisis hit, the process of global integration comes to an abrupt halt. However, regional integration, albeit at a slower pace, is still clearly evident in the post-crisis period. As for the Asian bond market, evidence of both global and regional integration is found but, in comparison, the latter is more convergent post 2008. Regional integration is stronger when interest rates with longer maturity are considered. In addition, we identify some convergent subgroups of countries and this suggests that a multi-tiered style of convergence is present.     

Time-varying integration,interdependence and contagion

Bekaert et al. (2005) define contagion as “correlation over and above what one would expect from economic fundamentals”. Based on a two-factor asset pricing specification to model fundamentally-driven linkages between markets, they define contagion as correlation among the model residuals, and develop a corresponding test procedure. In this paper, we investigate to what extent conclusions from this contagion test depend upon the specification of the time-varying factor exposures. We develop a two-factor model with global and regional market shocks as factors. We make the global and regional market exposures conditional upon both a latent regime variable and three structural instruments, and find that, for a set of 14 European countries, this model outperforms more restricted versions. The structurally-driven increase in global (regional) market exposures and correlations suggest that market integration has increased substantially over the last three decades. Using our optimal model, we do not find evidence that further integration has come at the cost of contagion. We do find evidence for contagion, however, when more restricted versions of the factor specifications are used. We conclude that the specification of the global and regional market exposures is an important issue in any test for contagion.     

Financial integration and the price of world covariance risk: Large- vs. small-cap stocks

We investigate whether recent country-level evidence of global pricing is particular to large-cap stocks. Specifically, we examine cross-country return correlations and conduct asset pricing tests on three size-based stock portfolios for nine developed countries over the period from 1980 to 2004. We find that large-cap stocks realize significant comovements across countries, whereas small-cap stocks realize smaller average correlations (relative to both large-cap stocks and small-cap stocks across countries). More important, asset pricing tests suggest that while large-cap stocks are priced globally, global pricing is rejected for most small-cap stocks. Finally, the evidence indicates that financial integration deepened in recent years primarily for large-cap stocks. Overall, the results suggest that the global pricing pertains chiefly to large-cap stocks.     

信息传导与市场整合——基于商品期货上市的准自然实验

从制度设计上打破市场分割、促进市场整合,对提高市场效率、促进经济有序健康发展具有重要意义。本文以商品期货上市作为准自然实验,构建双重差分模型,实证检验了商品期货上市交易对现货商品市场价格整合的影响。研究发现,现货商品市场价格整合程度在相应商品期货上市后显著提升,这是因为商品期货上市显著地促进了价格信息在全国范围内的传导,且这种提升效应主要体现在价格信息传导比较顺畅的地区。此外,商品期货上市提高了现货商品市场价格同步性,缓解了现货商品价格信息滞后程度,降低了现货商品交易成本。进一步研究发现,商品期货市场的交易信息质量越高,越有利于提高现货商品市场的整合程度。本研究为当前我国建设全国统一大市场提供了一定参考。     

Convergence of Real Capital Market Interest Rates—Evidence from Inflation Indexed Bonds

This paper investigates the convergence of long‐term ex ante real interest rates (RIRs) obtained from Canadian, French, UK, and U.S. inflation indexed government bonds. In contrast to previous research, our evidence suggests full convergence in the long run and, hence, capital market integration. For the same sample period, global convergence is rejected for RIRs measured in conventional terms. From these results, we conclude that previous tests of the long‐run real interest rate parity might have suffered from weak measurement of real capital market interest rates.     

Capital and credit market integration and real economic contagion during the global financial crisis

This study investigates the role of financial integration in the spread of global financial crisis. In particular, this study shows how the effect of the crisis on real business cycle co-movement varied for capital and credit market integration, using a sample of 58 countries in 2001–2013. During the global financial crisis, the United States – the epicenter of the crisis – experienced a severe downturn in the real economy, and other countries followed suit. We find that during the global financial crisis, the business cycle co-movements between the United States and the rest of the world were stronger when the level of capital market integration between them was higher. However, the co-movements were weaker when the level of credit market integration was higher. These findings are robust even when including investment channels, local fundamental factors, endogenous policy responses across countries, and alternative measures for financial integration and business cycle co-movements.     

Equity market integration in the Asia-Pacific region: A smooth transition analysis

We use a smooth transition logistic function to test for equity market integration in a sample of Asia-Pacific countries. This allows us to gauge the speed at which a market is becoming integrated. Of the countries we examine we find that Thailand has the fastest pace of global integration. When we examine the extent to which local integration is taking place, we find that Singapore is experiencing the fastest rise in market integration.     

Administrative division adjustments and stock price comovement: Evidence from the city–county mergers in China

Under the background of Chinese market segmentation, whether government-led administrative division adjustments can promote regional economic integration is a practical issue. Taking interregional firms’ stock price comovement as a micro measurement of regional integration, this paper investigates the regional integration effect of administrative division adjustments, i.e., city–county mergers. We find that stock price comovement between county-level and municipal district-level firms in the merged counties and municipal districts significantly improve after city–county mergers, particularly in regions with a higher degree of market segmentation and lower degree of marketization. We further find that the increase in stock price comovement caused by city–county mergers emerges from the increase in comovement of real activities between firms in the merged counties and municipal districts. Taken together, our results suggest that government-led administrative division adjustments effectively promote regional integration.     

World capital markets and Finnish stock returns

The paper explores issues related to time-varying global equity market integration from a Finnish perspective. Finland is an interesting market since profound economic changes and financial deregulation have taken place since the mid-1980s. Using Finnish firm size ranked portfolios and a conditional four-factor asset pricing model, several restrictions on asset behaviour are examined. It is found that a proxy for changing market integration — lagged foreign equity ownership — has a significant impact on the relative importance of local and global risk factors. Significant differences are found between the pricing of shares that were freely-available to all (unrestricted shares) and domestic investors only (restricted shares). Results also suggest that major capital market reforms profoundly affect the degree of market integration, but local risk factors do not become redundant.     

Cryptocurrencies and stock market indices. Are they related?

In this paper, we investigate the stochastic properties of six major cryptocurrencies and their bilateral linkages with six stock market indices using fractional integration techniques. From the univariate analysis, we observe that for Bitcoin and Ethereum, the unit root null hypothesis cannot be rejected; for Litecoin, Ripple and Stellar, the order of integration is found to be significantly higher than 1; for Tether, however, we find evidence in favour of mean reversion. For the stock market indices, the results are more homogeneous and the unit root cannot be rejected in any of the series, with the exception of VIX where mean reversion is obtained. Concerning bivariate results within the cryptocurrencies and testing for cointegration, we provide evidence of no cointegration between the six cryptocurrencies. Along the same lines, testing for cointegration between the cryptocurrencies and the stock market indices, we find evidence of no cointegration, which implies that the cryptocurrencies are decoupled from the mainstream financial and economic assets. The findings in this paper indicate the significant role of cryptocurrencies in investor portfolios since they serve as a diversification option for investors, confirming that cryptocurrency is a new investment asset class.     

Dynamic stock market integration driven by the European Monetary Union: An empirical analysis

We examine the influence of the European Monetary Union (EMU) on the dynamic process of stock market integration over the period 2 January 1989–29 May 2003 using a bivariate EGARCH framework with time-varying conditional correlations. We find that there has been a clear regime shift in European stock market integration with the introduction of the EMU. The EMU has been necessary for stock market integration as unidirectional causality was found. Linear systems regression analysis shows that the increase in both regional and global stock market integration over this period was significantly driven in part, by macroeconomic convergence associated with the introduction of the EMU and financial development levels.     

Time-varying market integration and stock and bond return concordance in emerging markets

We investigate the extent to which emerging stock market integration affects the joint behavior of stock and bond returns using a two-stage semi-parametric approach. Using a sample of 18 emerging markets, we find an unambiguous and robust link between emerging stock market integration and stock–bond return decoupling. We explain this with a decline in the segmentation risk premia in equities modeled by De Jong and De Roon [De Jong, F., De Roon, F.A., 2005. Time-varying market integration and expected returns in emerging markets. Journal of Financial Economics 78, 583–613] that leads to increased demand for stocks and reduced or unchanged demand for bonds. Our findings deliver new insights into the financial liberalization and stock–bond comovement literatures.     

Not all emerging markets are the same: A classification approach with correlation based networks

Using dynamic conditional correlations and network theory, this study brings a novel interdisciplinary framework to define the integration and segmentation of emerging countries. The individual EMBI+ spreads of 13 emerging countries from January 2003 to December 2013 are used to compare their interaction structure before (phase 1) and after (phase 2) the global financial crisis. Accordingly, the unweighted average of dynamic conditional correlations between cross country bond returns significantly increases in phase 2. At first glance, the increased co-movement degree suggests an integration of the sample countries after the crisis. However, using correlation based stable networks, we show that this is not enough to make such a strong conclusion. In particular, we reveal that the increased average correlation is more likely to be caused by clusters of countries that exhibit high within-cluster co-movement but not between-cluster co-movement. Potential reasons for the post-crisis segmentation and important implications for international investors and policymakers are discussed.