Testing for financial contagion based on a nonparametric measure of the cross‐market correlation

When contagion is defined as a significant increase in market comovement after a shock to one country, we propose a test for financial contagion based on a nonparametric measure of the cross-market correlation. Monte Carlo simulation studies show that our test has reasonable size and good power to detect financial contagion, and that Forbes and Rigobon's test (2002) is relatively conservative, indicating that their test tends not to find evidence of contagion when it does exist. Applying our test to investigate contagion from the 1997 East Asian crisis and the 2007 Subprime crisis, we find that there existed international financial contagion from the two financial crises.     

Time-series and cross-sectional excess comovement in stock indexes

This paper is an empirical investigation of the excess comovement among 82 industry indexes in the U.S. stock market between January 5, 1976 and December 31, 2001. We define excess comovement as the covariation between two assets beyond what can be explained by fundamental factors. In our analysis, the fundamental factors are sector groupings and the three Fama-French factors. We then estimate residuals of joint (FGLS) rolling regressions of these fundamentals on industry returns. Finally, we compute excess comovement as the mean of square unconditional, statistically significant correlations of these residuals. We show that excess comovement is high (about 0.07, i.e., equivalent to an average absolute correlation of 0.26), statistically significant, and represents an economically significant portion (almost 30%) of the average gross square return correlation. Excess comovement is also uniformly significant across industries and over time and only weakly asymmetric, i.e., not significantly different in rising or falling markets.We explain more than 23% of this market-wide (and up to 73% of sector-wide) excess square correlation by its positive relation to proxies for information heterogeneity and U.S. monetary and real conditions, and its negative relation to market volatility and the level of the short-term interest rate. This evidence is consistent with the implications of portfolio rebalancing and product market theories of financial contagion, but offers little or no support for the correlated liquidity shock channel.     

Equity Market Comovement and Contagion: A Sectoral Perspective

This paper takes an asset pricing perspective to investigate the equity market comovement and contagion at the sector level during the period 1990-2004 across the regions of Europe, Asia, and Latin America. It examines whether unexpected shocks from a particular market, or group of markets, are propagated to the sectors in other countries. The results confirm the sector heterogeneity of contagion. This implies that there are sectors that can still provide a channel for achieving the benefits of international diversification during crises despite the prevailing contagion at the market level. In addition, the results lend support to the importance of financial links in the propagation of contagion.     

Illiquidity shocks and the comovement between stocks: New evidence using smooth transition

This paper extends the smooth transition conditional correlation model by studying for the first time the impact that illiquidity shocks have on stock market return comovement. We show that firms that experience shocks that increase illiquidity are less liquid than firms that experience shocks that decrease illiquidity. Shocks that increase illiquidity have no statistical impact on comovement. However, shocks that reduce illiquidity lead to a fall in comovement, a pattern that becomes stronger as the illiquidity of the firm increases. This discovery is consistent with increased transparency and an improvement in price efficiency. We find that a small number of firms experience a double illiquidity shock. For these firms, at the first shock, a rise in illiquidity reduces comovement while a fall in illiquidity raises comovement. The second shock partly reverses these changes as a rise in illiquidity is associated with a rise in comovement and a fall in illiquidity is associated with a fall in comovement. These results have important implications for portfolio construction and also for the measurement and evolution of market beta and the cost of capital as it suggests that investors can achieve higher returns for the same amount of market risk because of the greater diversification benefits that exist. We also find that illiquidity, friction, firm size and the pre-shock correlation are all associated with the magnitude of the correlation change.     

Testing financial contagion on heteroskedastic asset returns in time-varying conditional correlation

We suggest that there is a significant relationship between cross-market comovement and time varying volatility. The time-varying component of cross-market dependence is attributed to the intertemporal risk-return adjustment by rational, risk-averse investors who systematically revise their expectation in response to changing volatility. To reflect the time-varying component of cross-market dependence, we propose a time-varying correlation test for contagion. Our results show that out of the countries reporting contagion evidence under the constant correlation test, none of the countries exhibits contagion evidence from the 1997 Asian crisis. We conclude that a high level of cross-market correlation during a crisis reported as contagion evidence under the standard constant correlation test is mostly due to the high level of cross-market co-movement resulting from the intertemporal risk-return adjustment.     

Testing for contagion: a conditional correlation analysis

In this paper, we test for contagion within the East Asian region, contagion being defined as a significant increase in the degree of comovement between stock returns in different countries. For this purpose, we use a parameter stability test, and, following [Rigobon, R., 2003a. On the measurement of the international propagation of shocks: is the transmission stable?, Journal of International Economics], we control for three types of bias, resulting from heteroscedasticity, endogeneity and omitted variable, respectively. The null of interdependence against the alternative of contagion is then tested as an overidentifying restriction. Unlike other studies, our approach is based on full-sample estimation, and hence avoids the power problems arising from the typical situation of a large “noncrisis” and a small “crisis” sample. We also select endogenously the breakpoints corresponding to the beginning of the contagion period, and finally we impose more plausible restrictions to identify the system. Our findings suggest the existence of contagion within the East Asian region, consistent with crisis-contingent theories of asset market linkages.     

A network perspective of comovement and structural change: Evidence from the Chinese stock market

How to appropriately characterize the comovement between any pair of individual stocks and describe the market comovement structure is a great challenge and plays a key role in understanding emerging markets. This paper applies the complex network approach to deal with this issue for the Chinese stock market. Firstly, in view of the topological properties, we investigate the time-varying comovement between individual stocks by constructing 14 directed weighted stock networks. Furthermore, the weighted LeaderRank algorithm is employed to describe the comovement structure of the entire market. Most importantly, from the perspective of fundamental factors and industry factors, we reveal the driving factors of the comovement and structural change of the entire market. The empirical results suggest that: (i) Stocks with higher weighted LeaderRank algorithm scores generally have more long-term investment value; and the so-called views, “too big to fail” and “too connected to fail”, are further confirmed. (ii) ROE, BMratio and Growth are significantly positively correlated with the comovement between individual stocks, and Mvalue is significantly negatively correlated during normal periods. However, during the crisis, the signs of regression coefficients of above four explanatory variables are reversed. (iii) In normal periods, we only find that the agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry & fishery and composite have significant influence on the comovement structure of the entire market. Besides, public utilities and medias also have a significant impact during the crisis. In addition, a very interesting fact in point is that network density, average clustering coefficient, and global efficiency can provide an “early warning” for possible upcoming crises.     

Contagion effect in financial markets after the South-East Asia Tsunami

Powerful earthquakes may cause heavy damage to the financial markets of individual countries (regions), and may even spillover to other countries (regions). Using 26 international stock indexes and exchange rates, this study examines whether any contagion effect occurred across financial markets after the strong earthquake in South-East Asia on December 26, 2004. Using heteroscedasticity biases based on correlation coefficients to examine the existence of the contagion effect, this study shows that no individual country stock market suffered from the contagion effect, but that the foreign exchange markets of some countries (namely India, Philippines and Hong Kong) did suffer from the contagion effect.     

Contagion Effect in International Trade After the Japanese 311 Earthquake

This study investigates spatial contagion on trading markets when an industrialized country is stricken by a natural disaster. We present a test for contagion effects on the cargo trading among the major trading partners. The test is based on a comparison of the correlation coefficients of transnational trade linkages in industrial cargo volumes before and after a disaster. Using the Japanese 311 earthquake in 2011 as a case study, the results show that spatial contagion is observed for neighboring countries exporting to Taiwan. It also found that the occurrence of contagion effect depends on the industrial market share of the linkages, and the contagion effect disperses over time.     

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.     

A multilateral approach to examining the comovements among major world equity markets

This study investigates the comovement in stock indices among major developed markets, where Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) indices are employed for the purposes of the study. We employ a model that accommodates multilateral international impacts on equity index movements. The empirical results reveal the existence of significant international transmission effects among these major world markets, both in terms of returns and volatility, and mostly in a positive direction. The U.S. market, as expected, is the leading market in the sense that it has the most pervasive and significant impact on all markets across continents. However, the U.S. market exhibits a different relationship with European markets from that with Asia-Pacific markets. The evidence also suggests that strong regional transmission effects exist. A further investigation using the extended model reveals that the linkages between U.S. and European markets are driven by positive global common forces and by negative international competitive effects. On the other hand, the U.S. and Asian markets are linked through positive global common forces and positive international contagion effects. The United States, Canada, and the U.K. are the three markets that still demonstrate contagion influence over countries outside its own region. The Asia-Pacific markets are more susceptible to contagion effects. Finally, it is interesting to find that Japanese market performance became more contagious toward other markets during the Asian financial crisis period.     

The annual report tone and return Comovement—Evidence from China's stock market

Our paper uses A-share firms listed on Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) and Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE) to explore the role of the textual tone of Chinese listed companies' annual reports on Chinese equities' return comovement. Our paper finds that the tone embedded in A-share companies' annual reports significantly increases Chinese stocks' return comovement as the tone exacerbates information asymmetry and reduces the quality of information. In addition, the annual report tone has a prominent effect on Chinese stocks' return comovement for stocks with low institutional ownership, private ownership stocks, and stocks with low market shares. Further investigation shows that the impact of the tone of the annual report on Chinese stocks' return comovement is strong during economic expansions, and when investor sentiment is high. An additional examination on hidden information in the textual tone suggests that published financial data do not explain a substantial part of the textual tone that is associated with the increase in the comovement, suggesting that private information should enhance informational opaqueness in the stock market.     

The comovement of US and German bond markets

We use a vector-autoregression, with parameter estimates corrected for small-sample bias, to decompose US and German unexpected bond returns into three ‘news’ components: news about future inflation, news about future real interest rates, and news about future excess bond returns (term premia). We then cross-country correlate these news components to see which component is responsible for the high degree of comovement of US and German bond markets. For the period 1975-2003 we find that inflation news is the main driving force behind this comovement. When news is coming to the US market that future US inflation will increase, there is a tendency that German inflation will also increase. This is regarded bad news for the bond market in both countries whereby bond prices are bid down leading to immediate negative return innovations and changing expectations of future excess bond returns. Thus, comovement in expected future inflation is the main reason for bond market comovement.     

Crossborder financial contagion to Germany: How important are OTC dealers?

We examine crossborder contagion from a number of financial systems to the German financial system using the information content of CDS prices in a GARCH model. After controlling for common factors which may cause comovement in security prices, we find evidence for contagion from the US and European financial systems. Assessing contagion for dealer and non-dealer banks suggests that contagion from dealer banks is the most prominent source of contagion to the German financial system. While German non-dealer banks are affected both by European and US dealers, only US dealer banks have a contagion effect to German dealer banks.     

‘Slow-burn’ spillover and ‘fast and furious’ contagion: a study of international stock markets

‘Fast and furious’ contagion across capital markets is an important phenomenon in an increasingly integrated financial world. Different from ‘slow-burn’ spillover or interdependence among these markets, ‘fast and furious’ contagion can occur instantly. To investigate this kind of contagion from the US, Japan and Hong Kong to other Asian economies, we design a research strategy to capture fundamental interdependence, or ‘slow-burn’ spillover, among these stock markets as well as short-term departures from this interdependence. Based on these departures, we propose a new contagion measure which reveals how one market responds over time to a shock in another market. We also propose international portfolio analysis for contagion via variance decomposition from the portfolio manager’s perspective. Using this research strategy, we find that the US stock market was cointegrated with the Asian stock markets during four specific periods from 3 July 1997 to 30 April 2014. Beyond this fundamental interdependence, the shocks from both Japan and Hong Kong have significant ‘fast and furious’ contagion effects on other Asian stock markets during the US subprime crisis, but the shocks from the US have no such effects.     

On measuring synchronization of bulls and bears: The case of East Asia

This paper implements estimation and testing procedures for comovements of stock market “cycles” or “phases” in Asia. We extend the Harding and Pagan [Harding, D., Pagan, A.P., 2006. Synchronization of cycles. Journal of Econometrics 132 (1), 59–79] test for strong multivariate nonsynchronization (SMNS) between business cycles to a test that allows for an imperfect degree of multivariate synchronization between stock market cycles. Moreover, we propose a test for endogenously determining structural change in the bivariate and multivariate synchronization indices. Upon applying the technique to five Asian stock markets we find a significant increase in the cross country comovements of Asian bullish and bearish periods in 1997. A power study of the stability test suggests that the detected increase in comovement is more of a sudden nature (i.e. contagion or “Asian Flu”) instead of gradual (i.e. financial integration). It is furthermore argued that stock market cycles and their propensity toward (increased) synchronization contain useful information for both investors, policy makers and financial regulators.     

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.     

The Relationships between Real Estate Price and Expected Financial Asset Risk and Return: Theory and Empirical Evidence

In pricing real estate with indifference pricing approach, market incompleteness is shown to significantly alter the conventional pricing relationships between real estate and financial asset. Specifically, we focus on the pricing implication of market comovement because comovement tends to be stronger in financial crisis when investors are especially sensitive to price declines. We find that real estate price increases with expected financial asset return but only in weak market comovement (i.e., a normal market environment) when investors enjoy diversification benefit. When market comovement is strong, real estate price strictly declines with expected financial asset return. More importantly, contrary to the conventional positive relationship from real option studies, real estate price generally declines with expected financial asset risk. With realistic market parameters, we show that there is a nonlinear relationship between real estate price and financial risk. When the market comovement is strong, real estate price only increases with financial asset risk when the risk is low but eventually declines with the risk when it becomes high. Our cross-country empirical results also show that the relationship between financial market risk and real estate price is non-monotonic, conditional on the degree of market comovement.     

Price-based return comovement

Similarly priced stocks move together. Stocks that undergo splits experience an increase in comovement with low-priced stocks and a decrease in their comovement with high-priced stocks. Price-based comovement is not explained by economic fundamentals, firm size, or changes in liquidity or information diffusion. The shift in comovement following splits is greater for large stocks, high-priced stocks, and when investor sentiment is high. In the full cross-section, price-based portfolios explain variation in stock-level returns after controlling for movements in the market and industry portfolios as well as portfolios based on size, book-to-market, transaction costs, and return momentum. The results suggest that investors categorize stocks based on price.     

Identifying the comovement of price between China's and international crude oil futures: A time-frequency perspective

Identifying the comovement of price between China's and international crude oil futures can help different market players gain a deeper understanding of the world crude oil market. This paper uses the wavelet (wavelet coherence and phase) methods to study the comovement characteristics at different time scales from three aspects (the strength of comovement, the direction of comovement and the lead-lag relationship of price fluctuation) and uses the complex network method to explore the evolutionary characteristics of the comovement with time. We use the daily closing prices of WTI, Brent and China's crude oil futures (INE) as sample data. The results show that the comovement between INE and international crude oil futures is extremely different from that between other international crude oil futures, and the comovement at different time scales is also different. Compared with the comovement between WTI and Brent crude oil futures, the comovement strength between INE and international crude oil futures is weak and the comovement direction is unstable. China's crude oil futures price fluctuation also tends to lag behind that of international crude oil futures. Compared with the long-term, the short-term comovement strength is weaker, the comovement states are more diverse and the transition between comovement states is more complex. Moreover, during the evolution of time, some comovement states have a higher probability of occurrence and they are also more stable than others. These findings are helpful for policy makers to design policies and for investors to make investment decisions.