Contagion and Global Financial Crises: Lessons from Nine Crisis Episodes

Episodes of extraordinary turbulence in global financial markets are examined during nine crises ranging from the Asian crisis in 1997–98 to the recent European debt crisis of 2010–13. After dating each crisis using a regime switching model, the analysis focuses on changes in the dependence structures of equity markets through correlation, coskewness and covolatility to address a range of hypotheses regarding contagion transmission. The results show that the great recession is a true global financial crisis. Finance linkages are more likely to result in crisis transmission than trade and emerging market crises transmit unexpectedly, particularly to developed markets.     

Contagion in the stock markets: The Asian financial crisis revisited

This paper presents empirical evidence of herding contagion in the stock markets during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, above and beyond macroeconomic fundamental driven co-movements. We analyze the cross-country time-varying correlation coefficients among the stock prices for the countries of Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Korea, and the Philippines, between crisis and tranquil periods. Macromodels are constructed and implemented to capture the pure contagion effects on the markets. After controlling for the economic fundamentals for the five countries, the paper finds strong evidence of herding contagion.     

Is the COVID-19 pandemic more contagious for the Asian stock markets? A comparison with the Asian financial,the US subprime and the Eurozone debt crisis

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has sent shock waves across the global stock markets. Several financial crises in the past too have had a global impact with their reach extending beyond the country of origin. The current study compares the contagion effect of four such crises viz. the Asian financial crisis, the US subprime crisis, the Eurozone debt crisis, and the currently ongoing Covid-19 crisis on Asian stock markets to understand which of these has had the most severe impact. It finds that among all the four crises, the US subprime crisis has been the most contagious for the Asian stock markets. The study also highlights the difference between severities of a liquidity crisis versus a real crisis and identifies the markets that remained insulated from all these crises, a finding which will be useful for portfolio managers in devising their asset allocation.     

Why are currency crises contagious? A comparison of the Latin American Crisis of 1994–1995 and the Asian Crisis of 1997–1998

Why Are Currency Crises Contagious? A Comparison of the Latin American Crisis of 1994–1995 and the Asian Crisis of 1997–1998.—This paper analyzes three channels through which currency crises are transmitted between countries: contagion based on unsustainable economic fundamentals; contagion resulting from herding behaviour in financial markets; contagion induced by close trade integration. The presented model that links currency crises with these three types of contagion is employed to analyze the transmission of the Mexican crisis in 1994–1995 and the Thai crisis in 1997 to other emerging economies. The empirical results show that, first, the most important contagion channels were based on close financial and trade integration rather than on the weakness of macroeconomic fundamentals. Second, the vulnerability to capital flow reversals and weak financial sectors made countries particularly prone to a currency crisis, while external imbalances and currency misalignments were much less important. JEL no. F30, E60, E65, E44     

Return and volatility spillovers among the East Asian equity markets

This article examines the extent of contagion and interdependence across the East Asian equity markets since early 1990s and compares the ongoing crisis with earlier episodes. Using the forecast error variance decomposition from a vector autoregression, we derive return and volatility spillover indices over the rolling sub-sample windows. We show that there is substantial difference between the behavior of the East Asian return and volatility spillover indices over time. While the return spillover index reveals increased integration among the East Asian equity markets, the volatility spillover index experiences significant bursts during major market crises, including the East Asian crisis. The fact that both return and volatility spillover indices reached their respective peaks during the current global financial crisis attests to the severity of the current episode.     

High‐Frequency Contagion of Currency Crises in Asia*

Using daily data from the Asian currency crisis, the present paper examines high‐frequency contagion effects among six Asian countries. The ‘origin’ (of exchange rate depreciation, or decline in stock prices) and the ‘affected’ (currencies, or stock prices) in the daily spillover relationship were defined and identified. Indonesia is found to be the main origin country, affecting exchange rates of other countries. Contrary to conventional wisdom, evidence of high‐frequency crisis spillover from the Thai exchange rate to other currencies was weak at best. There exists a high‐frequency contagion in stock markets among East Asian countries. Contagion coefficients are positively correlated with trade indices, indicating that investors lower their financial assessment of a country that has trade linkage to a crisis origin country within days, if not hours, of a shock.     

The current global financial crisis: Do Asian stock markets show contagion or interdependence effects?

In the framework of the current global economic crisis, a pertinent question is whether the world economies are suffering from contagion or interdependence effects. With its origins in the US sub-prime mortgage market crisis starting at the end of 2007, when a loss of confidence by investors in the value of securitized mortgages resulted in a liquidity crisis, hard-hitting the banking system and rapidly spreading into the financial markets, the effects of the crisis were automatically reflected in the rest of the world economies. These effects become more severe as the rest of the world is facing economic and financial instability. Therefore, the American shock can be seen as the trigger that revealed the other economies’ own financial problems. The main finding of this paper shows that the US stock markets are not generating contagious effects into the Asian stock markets. However, strong evidence of volatility transmission derived from these economies’ interlinkages has been detected.     

Currency crisis and contagion: evidence from exchange rates and sectoral stock indices of the Philippines and Thailand

This paper analyzes empirically the recent Asian financial crisis by using high-frequency data of exchange rates and stock indices of the Philippines and Thailand. With time-series techniques, this study confirms that benchmark stock indices often fail to provide valuable insights into currency crises, but there is evidence that developments in some sectoral indices—including those of banking and financial sectors—seem to have caused upward pressure on exchange rates. Our evidence therefore confirms the importance of financial markets as a transmission channel during the currency crisis period.     

Bank market power, economic growth and financial stability: Evidence from Asian banks

This paper examines whether Asian banks are still prone to moral hazard in the aftermath of the 1997 Asian crisis. Using a sample of commercial banks from 12 Asian countries during the 2001–2007 period, our empirical findings highlight that greater market power in the banking market results in higher instability. Although banks are better capitalized in less competitive markets their default risk remains higher. A deeper investigation however shows that such behaviour is dependent on the economic environment. Higher economic growth contributes to neutralize greater risk taking and higher instability in less competitive markets.     

新兴市场国家金融危机原因浅析

新兴市场国家经济在过去的20年里取得了举世瞩目的成就,但自20世纪90年代开始,其却频频受到金融危机的冲击:1994年的墨西哥危机、1997年的东南亚危机、1998年的俄罗斯危机、2001年的阿根廷危机。这反映了新兴市场国家在金融全球化进程中的脆弱性。本文主要详细分析新兴市场国     

Sovereign Spreads and Contagion Risks in Asia

In the aftermath of the recent global financial turmoil, sovereign spreads have exhibited a significant degree of volatility. This paper explores how much of these movements in the spreads of Asian economies reflected shifts in global risk aversion or country‐specific risks, directly from worsening fundamentals, or indirectly from spillovers originating in other sovereigns, or risks and uncertainty surrounding their exchange rates. This analysis finds that earlier in the crisis, the increase in market‐implied contagion led to an increase of sovereign bond yields relative to the swaps. Higher‐rated sovereign bonds in Asia benefited from the flight to quality that accompanied the increase in global risk aversion during this period. Once the systemic risks in the financial sectors worldwide were contained, the risk of sovereign spillovers eased, which, together with a fall in perceived currency‐related risks, led to a fall in sovereign bond yields relative to swaps yields across the board. Comparing the situation to that of Europe, the present paper concludes that the debt crisis in the euro area has not affected the perception of sovereign risks of Asian economies. In fact, a fall in exchange rate and spillover risks, combined with stronger fundamentals, have led to a continued normalization of Asian sovereign spreads since the height of the financial crisis.     

Contagion and risk premia in the amplification of crisis: Evidence from Asian names in the global CDS market

In the turmoil of 2007–2009, troubles in a small segment of the US mortgage market escalated into a crisis of global proportions. A striking feature of the crisis is the contagion that hit Asia. In a region where direct exposures to problem mortgages were minimal, credit spreads for major borrowers widened even more than they did in Europe and the United States. We argue that the contagion was part of an amplification mechanism driven by valuation losses caused by the bursting of a global credit bubble. The valuation losses stemmed not so much from a reassessment of credit risks as from a global repricing of these risks. It was this repricing that was the main channel for contagion into Asian credit (and equity) markets. For empirical evidence, we analyze fluctuations in credit default swap (CDS) spreads and expected default frequencies (EDFs) for major Asian borrowers. We find that valuation losses on CDS contracts for these Asian borrowers arose in part from movements in global and region-specific risk pricing factors as well as from revisions to expected losses from defaults.     

Cross-country causes and consequences of the 2008 crisis: Early warning

This paper models the causes of the 2008 financial crisis together with its manifestations, using a Multiple Indicator Multiple Cause (MIMIC) model. Our analysis is conducted on a cross-section of 107 countries; we focus on national causes and consequences of the crisis, ignoring cross-country “contagion” effects. Our model of the incidence of the crisis combines 2008 changes in real GDP, the stock market, country credit ratings, and the exchange rate. We explore the linkages between these manifestations of the crisis and a number of its possible causes from 2006 and earlier. We include over sixty potential causes of the crisis, covering such categories as: financial system policies and conditions; asset price appreciation in real estate and equity markets; international imbalances and foreign reserve adequacy; macroeconomic policies; and institutional and geographic features. Despite the fact that we use a wide number of possible causes in a flexible statistical framework, we are unable to link most of the commonly cited causes of the crisis to its incidence across countries. This negative finding in the cross-section makes us skeptical of the accuracy of “early warning” systems of potential crises, which must also predict their timing.     

East Asian equity markets,financial crises,and the Japanese currency

The paper studies the interactions between the US and four East Asian equity markets. The focus is on the change in the information structure/flow between these markets triggered by the 1997 Asian financial crisis. It is shown that the information structure during the crisis period is different from that in the non-crisis periods. While the US market leads the four East Asian markets before, during, and after the crisis, it is Granger-caused by these markets during the financial crisis period but not in the post-crisis sample. Further, in accordance with concerns reported in the market, the Japanese currency is found to affect these equity markets during the crisis period. The Japanese yen effect, however, disappears in the post-crisis sample. The Japanese currency effect is quite robust as it is found from both local currency and US dollar return data and in the presence of Japanese stock returns. J. Japanese Int. Economies 21 (1) (2007) 138–152.     

Institutional Investors,Trade Linkage,Macroeconomic Similarities,and Contagion of the Thai Crisis

This paper empirically investigates the presence of contagion effects and their causes in the 1997 Southeast Asian crisis. Our empirical results indicate that the Thai crisis was transmitted to neighboring Southeast Asian countries through contagion. They also suggest that the international investors' institutional practice of securing sufficient liquidity and trade linkage were important in spreading the contagion, but the financial integration channel was not important. In addition, the similar macroeconomic conditions of the Southeast Asian countries, such as large capital inflows, large accumulation of current account deficit, and high level of external debt prior to the onset of the Thai crisis, were also responsible for the contagion. J. Japan. Int. Econ., June 2001, 15(2), pp. 199–224. Department of Ecnomics, Korea University, 5-1 Anam-dong, Songbuk-ku, Seoul 136-701, Republic of Korea; and School of Economics, Kookmin University, 861-1 Chongnung-dong, Songbuk-ku, Seoul 136-702, Republic of Korea. Copyright 2001 Academic Press.Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: F30, F31.     

The co-movement of stock markets in East Asia: Did the 1997–1998 Asian financial crisis really strengthen stock market integration?

This paper examines the integration and causality of interdependencies among seven major East Asian stock exchanges before, during, and after the 1997–1998 Asian financial crisis. For this purpose, we use daily stock market data from July 1, 1992 to June 30, 2003 in local currency as well as US dollar terms. The data reveal that the relationships among East Asian stock markets are time varying. While stock market interactions are limited before the Asian financial crisis, we find that Hong Kong and Singapore respond significantly to shocks in most other East Asian markets, including Shanghai and Shenzhen, during this crisis. After the crisis, shocks in Hong Kong and Singapore largely affect other East Asian stock markets, except for those in Mainland China. Finally, considering the role of the USA shows that it strongly influences stock returns in East Asia – except for Mainland China – in all periods, while the reverse does not hold true.     

Sovereign contagion risk measure across financial markets in the eurozone: a bivariate copulas and Markov Regime Switching ARMA based approaches

Review of World Economics - This paper analyzes sovereign risk contagion across financial markets in the eurozone during and after the European debt crisis. A particular focus is made on the causal...     

Foreign devaluation as a coordinating device of heterogeneous investors: A game‐theoretic analysis of financial contagion

This paper investigates financial contagion by extending the Morris–Shin (1998) model of financial crises. It is assumed that before a devaluation in a foreign country, home investors have only private information on the state of the home country. It is demonstrated that the occurrence of a currency crisis in the foreign country may trigger a similar crisis in the home country by coordinating heterogeneous beliefs of home investors. The model is designed to describe the Asian currency crisis of 1997.     

Estimating time-varying currency betas with contagion: New evidence from developed and emerging financial markets

This paper examines the conditional time-varying currency betas from five developed and six emerging financial markets with contagion and spillover effects. We employ a trivariate asymmetric BEKK-type GARCH-in-Mean (MGARCH-M) approach to estimate the time-varying conditional variance and covariance of returns of stock market index, the world market portfolio and bilateral exchange rate between the US dollar and the local currency. The results show that the world market and currency risks are not only priced in the stock markets, but also time-varying. It is found that currency betas are much more volatile than the world market betas, and currency betas in the emerging markets are more volatile than those in the developed markets. We find empirical evidence of contagion effect and spillovers between stock market and foreign exchange market during the recent global financial crisis, and the effect is stronger in the emerging markets than that in the developed markets. Two applications are provided to illustrate the usefulness of time-varying currency betas.     

The role of production fragmentation in international business cycle synchronization in East Asia

This paper analyzes factors contributing to the observed increase in international business cycle synchronization between eight East Asian developing countries and the major developed economies of Japan and the United States. To this end, a two-country dynamic general equilibrium (DGE) model is proposed which focuses on the role of production fragmentation among these countries. A key feature of the model is that it includes the trade in differentiated capital goods, which are added to the capital stock for production, and the technology embodied in these capital goods. The parameters of the model are calibrated using actual data of the countries included. Model simulations are conducted for two periods (1993–1997 and 1999–2005), before and after the Asian financial crisis, showing that the increase in business cycle synchronization can be attributed mainly to the growing fragmentation of production activities.