Effects of Economic Convergence on Stock Market Returns in Major EMU Member Countries

This study updates and extends existing literature by investigating the effects of economic convergence among major European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) member countries on stock market returns in each respective nation. Main findings include: (1) long-term stability in the EMU appears to be attainable, but further integration of product and factor markets is needed to reinforce convergence of real sectors; (2) the UK can be considered a quasi EMU participant due to convergence of its key economic variables with those of formal EMU members; and (3) economic convergence appears to be an important contributing factor to returns from stock markets in the included EMU countries except Germany.     

Financial and Economic Integration's Impact on Asian Equity Markets’ Sensitivity to External Shocks

This paper investigates the spillover effects from U.S. and regional stock markets on local stock markets in the Pacific Basin region and China. We also analyze if the spillover depends on countries’ financial and economic integration. We apply a stochastic volatility model with jumps in order to separate the spillover of extreme shocks from those of normal shocks. We find that the spillovers of both normal and extreme shocks are significant for almost all Asian countries except China. We also find that the time‐variation in stock market interdependence can largely be associated with economic integration.     

Assessing time-varying stock market integration in Economic and Monetary Union for normal and crisis periods

In this paper, we examine the stock market integration process amongst 17 Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) countries from January 2002 to June 2013 over a normal period as well as for the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and Eurozone Debt Crisis (EDC) periods. We classify the economies in three groups (A, B and C) based on their GDP to examine whether the economic size influences financial integration. Seven indicators are used for the purpose, namely, beta convergence, sigma convergence, variance ratio, asymmetric DCC, dynamic cointegration, market synchronisation measure and common components approach. The results suggest that large-sized EMU economies (termed as Group A) exhibit strong stock market integration. Moderate integration is observed for middle-sized EMU economies with old membership (termed as Group B). Small-sized economies (termed as Group C) economies seemed to be least integrated within the EMU stock market system. The findings further suggest presence of contagion effects as one moves from normal to crisis periods, which are specifically stronger for more integrated economies of Group A. We recommend institutional, regulatory and other policy reforms for Group B and especially Group C to achieve higher level of integration.     

An objective Bayesian analysis of common stochastic trends in international stock prices and exchange rates

This paper uses Bayesian methods to analyze unit root and cointegration properties of two different finance data sets. Avoiding the use of subjective prior information, the paper surveys and utilizes several different objective Bayesian methodologies in an investigation of common stochastic trends in international stock markets and in spot and forward exchange rates for several different countries.     

Common and country-specific components in national stock prices

Previous studies on cointegration among national stock markets show conflicting results. This paper designs a general state space model to investigate the importance of a common world-wide component and the existence of country-specific components in national stock market indices. For G7 countries, there exist country-specific permanent and transitory components. Based on a variance decomposition analysis, Germany, Italy, and Japan's country-specific permanent shocks account for about half of their total permanent shocks. Most of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom's transitory shocks are country-specific. G7 countries do not seem to cointegrate around one common stochastic trend, and potential long-run international diversification benefits still exist.     

Changing integration of EMU public property markets

This paper examines the impact of the European Monetary Union (EMU) on European public property market integration. Results indicate that the property markets are long-run independent and show little evidence of short-run relationships prior to the formation of the EMU. However, the degree of interdependence and the extent of convergence among the largest property markets have intensified substantially after the launch of the Euro as the common currency in January, 1999. Moreover, each of the property markets under consideration is endogenous in that none is found to “dominate” the others toward long-run equilibrium. Short-run results indicate substantial interrelationships among the markets after the adoption of the Euro. Finally, the study shows that stock markets, bond markets, and public property markets follow similar convergence patterns.     

Dynamic linkages between emerging European and developed stock markets: Has the EMU any impact?

This paper investigates the short- and long-run behavior of major emerging Central European (Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia), and developed (Germany, US) stock markets and assesses the impact of the EMU on stock market linkages. Evidence of one cointegration vector in both a pre- and a post-EMU sub-period indicates market comovements towards a stationary long-run equilibrium path. Central European markets tend to display stronger linkages with their mature counterparts, whereas the US market holds a world leading influential role. No dramatic post-EMU shock is detected in stock market dynamics. The empirical findings have important implications for the effectiveness of domestic policy decisions, as the emerging Central European states have recently joined the EU and local stock markets may become less immunized to external shocks.     

Capital Market Integration in the Middle East and North Africa

This paper studies capital market integration in Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries and its implications for international portfolio investment allocation. Starting with four cointegration methodologies, we significantly reject the hypothesis of a stable, long-run bivariate relationship between each of these markets and the European Monetary Union (EMU), the United States, and a regional benchmark. This indicates the existence of significant diversification opportunities for three categories of investors (EMU, world, and regional investors). A recursive analysis based on Barari (2004) suggests that recently, the MENA markets have started to move toward international financial integration. Investigating the effect of selected financial, economic, and political events on such a process, we extend the methodology and find that the markets react heterogeneously to the different categories of shocks. They should therefore not be treated as a bloc for global allocation purposes. Finally, after adjusting the integration levels by relative market capitalization, Israel and Turkey are the most promising markets in the region, followed by Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco. Tunisia and Lebanon seem to be lagging behind.     

Evolution of international stock and bond market integration: Influence of the European Monetary Union

This paper examines the dynamic relationship between daily stock and government bond returns of selected countries over the past decade to infer the state and progress of inter-financial market integration. We proceed to empirically investigate the influence of the European Monetary Union (EMU) on time variations in inter-stock–bond market integration/segmentation dynamics using a two-step procedure: First, we document the downward trends in time-varying conditional correlations between stock and bond market returns in European countries, Japan and the US. Second, we investigate the causality and determinants of this interdependent relationship, in particular, whether the various macroeconomic convergence criteria associated with the EMU have played a significant role. We find that real economic integration and the reduction in currency risk have generally had the desired effect on financial integration but monetary policy integration may have created uncertain investor sentiments on the economic future of the EMU, thereby stimulating a flight to quality phenomenon.     

A note on cointegration of international stock market indices

Cointegration is frequently used to assess the degree of interdependence of financial markets. We show that if a stock's price follows a stock specific random walk, market indices cannot be cointegrated. Indices are a mere combination of n different random walks which itself is non-stationary by construction. We substantiate the theoretical propositions using a sample of 28 stock indices as well as a simulation study. In the latter we simulate stock prices, construct indices and test whether these indices are cointegrated. We show that while heteroscedasticity misleads cointegration tests, it is not sufficient to explain the high correlation between stock market index returns. A common random walk component and correlated price innovations are necessary to reproduce this feature.     

The impact of unconventional monetary policy on the tail risks of stock markets between U.S. and Japan

Facing the economic downturn, the central bank of U.S. and Japan adopts the unconventional monetary policy to stimulate their economy. This paper studies the quantitative easing policy effectiveness via the tail risks of stock markets in the U.S., Japan and the other 74 countries. Although the stock markets of U.S. and Japan reveals the announcement-day effects of the QE policy, this study finds an asymmetric tail risk of return distribution on the QE policy effect. The post-period right-tail and left-tail risks of the stock markets are significantly smaller and larger than that of the pre-period of the QE programs, respectively. This implies that the tail risks of stock returns have dissimilar interdependence with the QE programs. Furthermore, the geographical dependence is the major factor that determines the contagion of stock market, and the fragility of foreign stock market caused by the US QE policy is larger than that of the Japan.     

去伪存真:油价趋势与股票市场——来自“一带一路”35国的经验证据

油价波动深刻影响全球经济,严重时会造成全球股市动荡,甚至引发系统性金融风险。然而油价中的信息噪音严重阻碍国际油价对股票市场的预测效果。本文提出的移动平均法可有效减弱信息噪音,研究表明,本文基于移动平均法构建的油价趋势因子对“一带一路”沿线国家股票市场具有良好的样本内和样本外可预测性。进一步研究发现,国际油价波动对产油国和非产油国股票市场的影响存在非对称性。本文为国际油价冲击股票市场提供了新的有力证据,同时本文研究成果提示了油价风险,对维持我国股票市场稳定,保持金融稳定具有一定意义。     

Foreign Property Shocks and the Impact on Domestic Securitized Real Estate Markets: An Unobserved Components Approach

As the globalization of world financial markets continues unabated the issue of benefits arising from international diversification becomes increasingly important. Due to the fixed geographical nature of the underlying product, securitized property might be considered immune from the effects of globalization, and to this extent researchers have considered the issue of international property market interdependence using a variety of statistical procedures. In this paper the question of interdependence across securitized property markets is examined by combining the Inoue (1999) cointegration methodology with the structural time series procedure of Harvey (1989). In the event of commonality of movement across property markets, this approach permits the researcher to isolate and visualize common movement, an operation that may be helpful to a portfolio manager trying to understand cross market activity. The results indicate that there is some unifying force across international property markets and that this unifying force may stem from the United States. The results also suggest that, at least to some extent, shocks to securitized property markets produce a similar response to stock market shocks.     

A study of cointegration and variance decomposition among national equity indices before and during the period of the Asian financial crisis

This study uses a cointegration and variance decomposition analysis to examine the linkages among the stock markets of 12 Asia–Pacific countries, before and during the period of the Asian financial crisis. Johansen (1988) multivariate cointegration and error-correction tests demonstrate evidence in support of the existence of cointegration relationships among the national stock indices during, but not before, the period of financial crises. In the recent crisis, the relationship within the South-East Asian countries seems to be stronger than that within the North-East Asian countries. The variance decomposition reveals that the ‘degree of exogeneity’ for all indices has been reduced, implying that no countries are ‘exogenous’ to the financial crisis. In addition, Granger’s causality test suggests that the US market still ‘causes’ some Asian countries during the period of crisis, reflecting the US market’s persisting dominant role.     

Stock market linkages: Evidence from Latin America

This study investigates the dynamic interdependence of the major stock markets in Latin America. Using data from 1995 to 2000, we examine the stock market indexes of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela. The index level series are non-stationary and so we employ cointegration analysis and error correction vector autoregressions (VAR) techniques to model the interdependencies. We find that there is one cointegrating vector which appears to explain the dependencies in prices. The results are robust to sensitivity tests based on translating indexes to US dollars (i.e., a common currency for all the markets) and to partitioning the sample into periods before and after the Asian and Russian financial crises of 1997 and 1998, respectively. Our results suggest that the potential for diversifying risk by investing in different Latin American markets is limited.     

Systemic and Idiosyncratic Risk in EU-15 Sovereign Yield Spreads after Seven Years of Monetary Union

The market capitalisation of international bond markets is much larger than that of international equity markets. However, compared to the large body of literature on international equity market linkages, there are far fewer empirical studies of bond systemic risk or international bond market co-movements. The extent of international bond market linkages merits investigation, as it may have important implications for the cost of financing fiscal deficit, monetary policymaking independence, modelling and forecasting long-term interest rates, and bond portfolio diversification. In this paper, we investigate the relative influence of systemic and idiosyncratic risk factors on yield spreads over 10-year German government securities during the seven years after the beginning of Monetary Integration. We estimate both panel regressions for the two groups of EU-15 countries (EMU and non-EMU) and specific-country regressions for the nine countries in the EMU group and the three countries in the non-EMU group. All estimations include both domestic (differences in market liquidity and credit risk) and international risk factors. The results present clear evidence that it was mostly idiosyncratic rather than systemic risk factors that drove the evolution of 10-year yield spread differentials over Germany in all EMU countries during the seven years after the beginning of Monetary Integration. Conversely, in the case of non-EMU countries, adjusted yield spreads (corrected from the foreign exchange factor) are influenced more by systemic risk factors. The fact that these countries do not share a common Monetary Policy might explain these results, which may show that government bonds from EMU countries have a better safe-haven status that those of non-EMU countries.     

Economic determinants of evolution in international stock market integration

This study investigates how and why different pairs of national equity markets display differing degrees of co-movement over time. We interpret a greater degree of co-movement to reflect greater stock market integration. We hypothesize the extent of stock market integration may depend upon certain macroeconomic variables that characterize and influence the degree of economic integration between two countries. As the degree of economic integration varies over time for a given pair of countries, we may expect the extent of equity market integration to vary systematically. We empirically investigate this hypothesis by employing a two-step procedure to explore first, how the degree of co-movement for a given pair of markets varies over time and second, why this interdependence varies over time. First, we employ daily data for nine national equity markets over 22 yearly samples to estimate annual Geweke [J. Am. Statist. Assoc. 77 (1982) 304–313] measures of feedback for different pairs of markets. For each pair of markets, the time series of 22 annual Geweke measures reveals the evolution in how co-movement in daily returns varies over time. Second, we specify a set of macroeconomic variables that characterize and influence the degree of economic integration for each pair of countries. Finally, we incorporate these variables in a pooled time series regression model across all possible pairs of these nine markets to estimate the influence of macroeconomic determinants on evolution in stock market integration.     

Integration of emerging stock markets with global stock markets

Financial integration for emerging economies should be seen as a long-term objective. In this paper, we examine stock market integration among five selected emerging stock markets (Brazil, China, Mexico, Russia and Turkey) and developed markets of the US, UK and Germany. The bounds testing approach to cointegration and error-correction modeling are used on monthly data from January 2001 to December 2014 to determine the short-run and long-run relationship between emerging stock market returns and the returns of the developed stock markets. The results show evidence of the existence of short-run integration among stock markets in emerging countries and the developed markets. However, the long-run coefficients for stock market returns in all emerging countries show a significant relationship only with Germany stock market return. The empirical findings in this study have important implications for academicians, international investors, and policymakers in emerging markets.     

Do Stock Index Futures Affect Economic Growth? Evidence from 32 Countries

This article investigates the relationship between stock index futures markets development and economic growth using time-series methods for 32 developed and developing countries. Evidence of cointegration between stock index futures and real economy in 29 countries suggests the presence of co-movements among the variables, indicating long-run stationarity in those countries. Our findings show that there is Granger-causality from stock index futures markets development to economic growth for middle-income countries with relatively low real per capita GDP, and Granger-causality in the reverse direction for the countries with high real per capita GDP. Variance decomposition and impulse-response function (IRF) analyses results support the existence of a relationship between stock index futures and real economy.     

On the stability of long-run relationships between emerging and US stock markets

While most studies have found no cointegration between emerging and US stock markets, some recent studies do find a long-run relationship exists between these markets. In view of these mixed findings, this study examines the stability of long-run relationships between a number of emerging stock markets and the US stock market using recursive cointegration analysis. The results show that no long-run relationship exists between emerging markets and the US market over most of the sample period throughout 1997. However, we do find clear evidence of cointegration in response to the recent global emerging market crisis in 1997–1998. We conclude that significant crisis events can change the degree of cointegration between international stock markets and, therefore, need to be taken into account in studies of long-run relationships between international stock markets.