Causality in volatility and volatility spillover effects between US, Japan and four equity markets in the South China Growth Triangular

In examining co-movement across international stock markets, previous researchers usually pre-determine the direction of causation and neglect the Chinese equity markets. In this study, we examine the spillover effects of volatility among the two developed markets and four emerging markets in the South China Growth Triangular using Chueng and Ng's causality-in-variance test. Several findings deserve mention: (1) the Japanese stock market affects the US stock market and there is a feedback relationship between the Hong Kong and US stock market. (2) Markets of the SCGT are contemporaneously correlated with the return volatility of the US market. (3) Econometric models constructed according to the results of variance-in-causality tests have greater explanatory power than the conventional GARCH(1,1) model. (4) Using the return volatility of foreign exchange as a proxy for informational arrival can explain excess kurtosis of a stock return series, especially for the less open emerging market. (5) Geographic proximity and economic ties do not necessarily lead to a strong relationship in volatility across markets.     

Asymmetric volatility and risk in equity markets

It appears that volatility in equity markets is asymmetric:returns and conditional volatility are negatively correlated.We provide a unified framework to simultaneously investigateasymmetric volatility at the firm and the market level and toexamine two potential explanations of the asymmetry: leverageeffects and volatility feedback. Our empirical application usesthe market portfolio and portfolios with different leverageconstructed from Nikkei 225 stocks. We reject the pure leveragemodel of Christie (1982) and find support for a volatility feedbackstory. Volatility feedback at the firm level is enhanced bystrong asymmetries in conditional covariances. Conditional betasdo not show significant asymmetries. We document the risk premiumimplications of these findings.     

Common stochastic trends and volatility in Asian-Pacific equity markets

This paper uses Johansen's cointegration test and a modified cointegration test with generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) effects to examine linkages between the U.S. and five Asian-Pacific stock markets (Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, and Singapore) during the period from 1988 to 1994. The modified cointegration test with GARCH effects is used to assess whether these stock price series share common time-varying volatility. The results indicate that the six stock markets are highly integrated through the second moments of stock returns but not the first moments.     

Volatility linkages of the equity,bond and money markets: an implied volatility approach

This study proposes an alternative approach for examining volatility linkages between Standard & Poor's 500, Eurodollar futures and 30 year Treasury Bond futures markets using implied volatility from the three markets. Simple correlation analysis between implied volatilities in the three markets is used to assess market correlations. Spurious correlation effects are considered and controlled for. I find that correlations between implied volatilities in the equity, money and bond markets are positive, strong and robust. Furthermore, I replicate the approach of Fleming, Kirby and Ostdiek (1998) to check the substitutability of the implied volatility approach and find that the results are nearly identical; I conclude that my approach is simple, robust and preferable in practice. I also argue that the results from this paper provide supportive evidence on the information content of implied volatilities in the equity, bond and money markets.     

The relation between implied and realised volatility in the Danish option and equity markets

We show that the conclusions to be drawn concerning the informational efficiency of illiquid options markets depend critically on whether one carefully recognises and appropriately deals with the econometrics of the errors‐in‐variables problem. This paper examines the information content of options on the Danish KFX share index. We consider the relation between the volatility implied in an option's price and the subsequently realised index return volatility. Since these options are traded infrequently and in low volumes, the errors‐in‐variables problem is potentially large. We address the problem directly using instrumental variables techniques. We find that when measurement errors are controlled for, call option prices even in this very illiquid market contain information about future realised volatility over and above the information contained in historical volatility.     

An empirical examination of jump risk in asset pricing and volatility forecasting in China's equity and bond markets

Understanding jump risk is important in risk management and option pricing. This study examines the characteristics of jump risk and the volatility forecasting power of the jump component in a panel of high-frequency intraday stock returns and four index returns from Shanghai Stock Exchange. Across portfolio indexes, jump returns on average account for 45% to 64% of total returns when jumps occur. Market systematic jump risk is an important pricing factor for daily returns. The average jump beta is 62% of the average continuous beta for individual stocks. However, the contribution of jump risk to total risk is limited, indicating that statistically significant jumps in the stochastic process of asset price are rare events but have tremendous impacts on the prices of common stocks in China. We further document that accounting for jump components improves the performance of volatility forecasting for some equity and bond portfolios in China, which is confirmed by in-the-sample and out-of-sample forecasting performance analysis.     

Dynamic correlations and volatility effects in the Balkan equity markets

This paper investigates the presence of time-varying comovements, volatility implications and dynamic correlations in major Balkan and leading mature equity markets, in order to provide quantified responses to international asset allocation decisions. Since asset returns and correlation dynamics are critical inputs in asset pricing, portfolio management and risk hedging, emphasis is placed on the respective (constant and dynamic) equity market correlations produced by alternative multivariate GARCH forms, the Constant Conditional Correlation and the Asymmetric Dynamic Conditional Correlation models. The Balkan stock markets are seen to exhibit time-varying correlations as a peer group, although correlations with the mature markets remain relatively modest. In conjunction with sensitivity analysis on the asymmetric variance–covariance matrix, active portfolio diversification to the Balkan equity markets indicates to potentially improve investors’ risk-return trade-off.     

Modelling return and conditional volatility exposures in global stock markets

This article empirically investigates the exposure of country-level conditional stock return volatilities to conditional global stock return volatility. It provides evidence that conditional stock market return volatilities have a contemporaneous association with global return volatilities. While all the countries included in the study exhibited a significant and positive relationship to global volatility, emerging market volatility exposures were considerably higher than developed market exposures. JEL Classification G12     

Dependence structure and extreme comovements in international equity and bond markets

Common negative extreme variations in returns are prevalent in international equity markets. This has been widely documented with statistical tools such as exceedance correlation, extreme value theory, and Gaussian bivariate GARCH or regime-switching models. We point to limits of these tools to characterize extreme dependence and propose an alternative regime-switching copula model that includes one normal regime in which dependence is symmetric and a second regime characterized by asymmetric dependence. We apply this model to international equity and bond markets, to allow for inter-market movements. Empirically, we find that dependence between international assets of the same type is strong in both regimes, especially in the asymmetric one, but weak between equities and bonds, even in the same country.     

Transmission of volatility between stock markets

This article investigates why, in October 1987, almost all stockmarkets fell together despite widely differing economic circumstances.We construct a model in which 'contagion' between markets occursas a result of attempts by rational agents to infer informationfrom price changes in other markets. This provides a channelthrough which a 'mistake' in one market can be transmitted toother markets. We offer supporting evidence for contagion effectsusing two different sources of data.     

Limited arbitrage between equity and credit markets

We document that short-horizon pricing discrepancies across firms' equity and credit markets are common and that an economically significant proportion of these are anomalous, indicating a lack of integration between the two markets. Proposing a statistical measure of market integration, we investigate whether equity–credit market integration is related to impediments to arbitrage. We find that time variation in integration across a firm's equity and credit markets is related to firm-specific impediments to arbitrage such as liquidity in equity and credit markets and idiosyncratic risk. Our evidence provides a potential resolution to the puzzle of why Merton model hedge ratios match empirically observed stock-bond elasticities (Schaefer and Strebulaev, 2008) and yet the model is limited in its ability to explain the integration between equity and credit markets (Collin-Dufresne, Goldstein, and Martin, 2001).     

Macroeconomic fundamentals, price discovery, and volatility dynamics in emerging bond markets

This study characterizes volatility dynamics in external emerging bond markets and examines how prices and volatility respond to macroeconomic news. As in mature bond markets, surprises about macroeconomic conditions in emerging markets are found to affect both conditional returns and volatility of external bonds, with the effects on volatility being more pronounced and longer lasting than those on prices. Yet the process of information absorption tends to be more drawn-out than in mature bond markets. Global and regional macroeconomic news is at least as important as local news for both price and volatility dynamics.     

Testing for volatility spillover between the British pound and the euro

This paper examines volatility spillover between two nominal U.S. dollar exchange rates: the British pound and the euro. Using the residual cross-correlation approach, we observe that the euro Granger-causes the British pound in variance, whereas the British pound does not Granger-cause the euro in variance. Our findings support unidirectional volatility spillover from the euro to the British pound; thus, the euro volatility has a one-sided impact on the British pound volatility. Moreover, the findings suggest that euro traders succeed in the efficient processing of information derived from the British pound.     

Return and volatility dynamics among four African equity markets: A multivariate VAR-EGARCH analysis

A multivariate VAR-EGARCH is used to examine the returns and volatility dynamics between thin-traded adjusted equity returns from Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. The findings suggest a reciprocal return spillover between Ghana and Kenya, and between Nigeria and South Africa. In addition, Nigeria appears to be the source of volatility innovations in Ghana, Kenya and South Africa. Own market volatility is pronounced, and volatility is highly persistent in all four markets with Ghana, Kenya and South Africa exhibiting volatility asymmetry.     

Transmission of shocks from cross-listed markets to the return and volatility of domestic stocks

This paper examines the transmission of information from German and the U.S. markets to domestic markets using daily price and volume data of 264 stocks from 26 countries that are traded in their home country and cross-listed outside their home market as depository receipts (DRs); in the German market as Global Depository Receipts (GDRs) and in the U.S. as American Depository Receipts (ADRs). We identify days with significant news arrivals in a market through minimum thresholds for both significant absolute price change and trading volume. DR returns and volatilities are affected by the shocks in the markets where they are cross-listed controlling for domestic shocks. Contemporaneous and/or lagged shocks to the cross-listed markets are transmitted to domestic stock returns and volatilities. South American DRs are affected mostly by U.S. shocks, while Eastern European DRs show greater reaction to the German shocks.     

The bias in Black-Scholes/Black implied volatility: An analysis of equity and energy markets

In this paper we examine the extent of the bias between Black and Scholes (1973)/Black (1976) implied volatility and realized term volatility in the equity and energy markets. Explicitly modeling a market price of volatility risk, we extend previous work by demonstrating that Black-Scholes is an upward-biased predictor of future realized volatility in S&P 500/S&P 100 stock-market indices. Turning to the Black options-on-futures formula, we apply our methodology to options on energy contracts, a market in which crises are characterized by a positive correlation between price-returns and volatilities: After controlling for both term-structure and seasonality effects, our theoretical and empirical findings suggest a similar upward bias in the volatility implied in energy options contracts. We show the bias in both Black-Scholes/Black implied volatilities to be related to a negative market price of volatility risk. JEL Classification G12 · G13     

Stock returns and volatility following the September 11 attacks: Evidence from 53 equity markets

September 11 attacks matter, and why not? Given that globalization has integrated financial markets, the magnitudes of the effect of the September 11 attacks on global markets are expected to be pervasive. We used data from 53 equity markets to investigate the short term impact of the September 11 attacks on markets' returns and volatility. Our empirical findings indicate that the impact of the attacks resulted in significant increases in volatility across regions and over the study period. However, stock returns experienced significant negative returns in the short-run but recovered quickly afterwards. Nevertheless, we find that the impact of the attacks on financial markets varied across regions. The implication here is that the less integrated regions (e.g., Middle East and North Africa) are with the international economy, the less exposed they are to shocks.     

Dynamic linkages between international bond markets

In this paper, we investigate interactions among the government bond markets of the US, Japan, Germany and the UK between 1988 and 2005. We test for cointegration between the bond indexes and also, conduct causality tests to examine spillover dynamics. We show that although the indexes are not cointegrated in the full sample, there is evidence for a stable relation in the latter part of the sample. Also, relying on recently developed causality tests, we uncover significant direct and indirect lead–lag relations between the markets. Our results have implications for international portfolio diversification strategies as well as the global conduct of monetary policy.     

Simultaneous volatility transmissions and spillover effects: U.S. and Hong Kong stock and futures markets

Contemporaneous transmission effects across volatilities of the Hong Kong Stock and Index futures markets and futures volume of trade are tested by employing a structural systems approach. Competing measures of volatility spillover, constructed from the overnight U.S. S&P500 index futures, are tested and found to impact on the Hong Kong asset return volatility and volume of trade patterns. The examples utilize intra-day 15-min sampled data from this medium-sized Asia Pacific equity and derivative exchange. Both the intra- and inter-day patterns in the Hong Kong market are allowed for in the estimation process.