Contagion and interdependence in stock markets: Have they been misdiagnosed?

We discuss different methods proposed in the literature to analyse the propagation mechanism of a crisis and to verify the presence of contagion. We consider the propagation mechanisms of the Hong Kong index on the Eurostoxx, Nikkei and Dow Jones indexes during the Asian financial crisis. We show that the methodologies proposed by Forbes and Rigobon [J. Finance 57 (2002) 2223] and by Corsetti et al. [Some contagion, some interdependence more pitfalls in tests of financial contagion, CEPR Discussion Paper No. 3310, London, 2002] are highly affected by the windows used and by the presence of omitted variables: we propose some analyses to strengthen the robustness of these tests. Concerning the DCC test, we show that it is unable to cope with some kinds of heteroskedasticity.     

Macroeconomic interdependence under incomplete markets

This paper uses a two-country, flexible-price model with overlapping generations of infinitely lived households to study the role of net foreign asset dynamics in the propagation of productivity shocks. Absence of Ricardian equivalence ensures existence of a unique steady-state level of net foreign assets, to which the economy returns following temporary shocks. Model dynamics are significantly different from those of a setup in which terms of trade movements perform all the international adjustment and net foreign assets do not move. The difference relative to a complete markets economy in which net foreign asset movements play no role in shock transmission is smaller. It is amplified if the substitutability across goods rises and if shocks are permanent.     

Economic determinants of emerging stock market interdependence

There is a wealth of literature on how integrated stock markets are, but very few studies attempts to determine why stock markets are integrated. However, it is arguably even more important to understand the driving forces behind stock market relationships than to know whether they exist. Such an understanding will provide a better grasp of the functioning of the global stock markets and allow investors and policy-makers to ask additional questions such as: Would an increase in bilateral trade between two countries, for example due to a new trade agreement, change the interdependence of their stock markets? If the growth rate of a particular emerging market falls due to the current global economic downturn, will its stock market drag along all the other stock markets or can it be known beforehand which stock markets are more likely to follow? This study empirically estimates cross-section and time-series models to determine the fundamental factors that influence the correlation and evolvement of the correlation between emerging stock markets.     

The internationalization of emerging stock markets

Stock markets in developing countries today account for about 7 per cent of world equity market capitalization, and this share is rising rapidly. Foreign investors have in the past often faced restrictive barriers to access to these emerging markets. A growing number of developing countries have now started to dismantle these barriers, however, resulting in an increasing interest by international portfolio managers in these emerging stock markets.     

Dynamic linkage between the Chinese and global stock markets: A normal mixture approach

The paper provides an empirical framework for analyzing the dynamic linkage between Chinese and thirty major stock markets globally. In doing so, we employ the bivariate normal mixture model, a weighted average of two normal distributions that can reveal both the degree and structure of dependence between markets. We show that the level of dependence strengthened since 2004 in general, whereas the contagion effects spread heterogeneously during the global financial crisis. We also examine potential factors that affect the stability of the linkage by capturing regime switching behavior. The results suggest that business cycle synchrony plays a significant role in increasing the instability of dependence between the Chinese and global stock markets, while the impact of asynchrony is negligible. Additionally, we observe increased dependence and unstable structure, associated with the implementation of China's capital market liberalization policies and RMB exchange rate reform.     

Volatilities in emerging MENA stock markets

This article examines the interrelationships among the emerging stock markets of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, as well as the relationship between each MENA stock market and the larger and more developed markets of Europe and the United States. It explores whether MENA stock markets can offer international investors unique risk/return characteristics to diversify international and regional portfolios. This study adds to the existing literature by focusing—for the first time— on the dynamic relationships in the volatilities of the returns in MENA stock markets. The econometric part of the article uses the causality‐in‐variances GARCH model, the TARCH and ARCH‐M models, and VAR analysis to model conditional volatilities in stock market returns and the dynamic responses of volatilities to innovations in conditional variances. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The tail risk of emerging stock markets

We investigate tail risk in emerging stock markets at the country, regional and world levels, by comparing the investable and non-investable segments in terms of the expected shortfall of standardized returns and tail dependence on the world market. Employing the skewed Student-t GJR-GARCH model and the SJC copula, we show that most investable portfolios have lower tail risk but higher tail dependence than non-investable ones; emerging markets are likely more dependent on the world market during large joint losses than large joint gains; and tail dependence of the aggregate and investable markets on the world market varies across countries and regions.     

Turnover and return in global stock markets

I study how growth affects liquidity of global stock exchanges and how liquidity determines cross-sectional returns on those stock exchange index portfolios. I measure portfolio liquidity by turnover ratio computed as value of shares traded over the market capitalization. I obtain data from FIBV, an association of global stock exchanges. In a multiple regression model for turnover ratio, I find age, size, type of exchange, competition for order flow, and growth rate to be significant determinants of portfolio liquidity; however, exchange- and time-specific effects are more appropriate for modeling portfolio liquidity. The time effects yield to three distinct regimes, while the exchange-specific effects are surrogates for the legal systems, English common law, and Civil laws of the countries. I estimate the parameters of a multiple regression model in a two-stage GLS framework in which index return is a function of turnover. The GLS method is preferable since a turnover ratio may have a non-stationary, random component. The significant determinants of index return are turnover and volatility, although some of the volatility effect may be a spillover from a January effect. Investors expect higher return from high turnover markets. However, the positive turnover expected return relation is true only in emerging markets; in developed markets expected return is a function of volatility. This result confirms existing empirical evidence that high turnover stock portfolios generate superior returns and further the sources and pricing of risk in emerging and developed markets are different.     

Volatility transmission in regional Asian stock markets

This study aims to investigate the presence of volatility transmission among regional equity markets of Pakistan, China, India, and Sri Lanka. Moreover for developed countries, the stock indices of USA, UK, Singapore, and Japan have been considered. If countries of the same region have a long run relationship then chances of an optimum currency area increases whereas, a diversification strategy to reduce risk is not workable. Results among the developed and Asian countries show that volatility transmission is present between friendly countries of different regions with economic links. We also find some evidence of transmission of volatility between countries which are on unfriendly terms.     

Emerging stock markets of the Eastern Mediterranean rim

The Eastern Mediterranean Rim possesses a vast and rich history of capitalist activity and capital markets. The oldest civilizations along these shores, namely in Egypt, in Greece, and in modern day Turkey, had an understanding of rudimentary economic theory and monetary systems long before the precursor peoples of the industrialized economies of today. Even stock markets in Turkey, Lebanon, and Egypt had greater relative depth and breadth 50 years ago than do 90% of the so-called emerging markets of today. This survey analyzes and profiles the equity capital markets of Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Egypt, and provides some clues to their future growth and performance.     

Dependence dynamics of stock markets during COVID-19

Stock markets have exhibited increased returns connectedness during the COVID-19 period. We examine the returns dependence among 42 stock markets classified under various emerging and developed groupings. We apply several dependence measures to examine the returns connectedness among the markets. Our results show that stock markets from the G-7 and Emerging Frontier and Asian (EFA) region exhibit high connectedness with other international markets, while Middle East and North African (MENA) and Latin American (LA) stock markets offer high diversification opportunities through low returns connectedness. The returns coherence of Central and East European (CEE) and G-7 markets increase significantly during the COVID-19 period which supports the hypothesis of contagion. However, during the pandemic MENA stock markets (excluding Greece) and most EFA markets (excluding China, Singapore and Korea) remain less cointegrated with other international equity markets. Our results have implications for individual and institutional investors, fund managers and other financial market stakeholders.     

Trading activity in stock index futures markets: The evidence of emerging markets

This study investigates the trading activity of the Taiwan Futures Exchange (TAIFEX) and Singapore Exchange Derivatives Trading Limited (SGX‐DT) Taiwan Stock Index Futures markets by analyzing the intraday patterns of volume and volatility. In addition, the market closure theory, which may explain such patterns, is examined. Overall, the trading pattern appears to be U‐shaped for the TAIFEX futures and U+W‐shaped for the SGX‐DT. For the SGX‐DT futures, volatility follows the same pattern as that of the number of price changes. For the TAIFEX futures, however, after the peak at the close of the spot market, the volatility in the TAIFEX futures drops consistently until the end of the day while volatility in the SGX‐DT still reaches a smaller peak at the close of the futures market. In addition, a visual inspection of the intraday patterns of these two markets shows that the market closure theory can effectively explain the intraday patterns of these two markets. The empirical results support the market closure theory in that liquidity demand from traders rebalancing their portfolios before and after market closures creates larger volume and volatility at both the open and close. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 22:983–1003, 2002     

Return and volatility spillovers among CIVETS stock markets

Coined in 2009, the CIVETS refers to Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey, and South Africa as a new group of frontier emerging markets with young and growing populations and dynamic economies. We provide a first look into the return and volatility spillovers between the CIVETS countries by employing causality-in-mean and causality-in-variance tests. The empirical results indicate that the contemporaneous spillover effects are generally low. Nevertheless, CIVETS stock markets may exhibit higher degrees of co-movements at times. The structure of the causal relationships further suggests the presence of intra-regional and inter-regional return and volatility interdependence effects.     

Liquidity and stock returns in emerging equity markets

Using data for 27 emerging equity markets for the period January 1992 through December 1999, we document the behavior of liquidity in emerging markets. We find that stock returns in emerging countries are positively correlated with aggregate market liquidity as measured by turnover ratio, trading value and the turnover–volatility multiple. The results hold in both cross-sectional and time-series analyses, and are quite robust even after we control for world market beta, market capitalization and price-to-book ratio. The positive correlation between stock returns and market liquidity in a time-series analysis is consistent with the findings in developed markets. However, the positive correlation in a cross-sectional analysis appears to be at odds with market microstructure theory that has been empirically supported by studies on developed markets. Our findings regarding the cross-sectional relation between stock returns and liquidity is consistent with the view that emerging equity markets have a lower degree of integration with the global economy.     

New empirical evidence on CEE's stock markets integration

The main aim of the study was to explore the integration of CEE’s stock markets (Central, South-East and Baltic) with those of the developed ones (Germany, USA and the UK). Using daily data from 20 October 2000 up to 20 October 2016, the static analysis indicates a long-run cointegration relationship between CEE markets and all three counterparts considered. The dynamic analysis indicates several short-run episodes of cointegration, which are influenced by nondomestic factors. When comparing among the counterparts, one can highlight that the US stock market is less integrated with emerging markets, which could be considered for portfolio diversification. Furthermore, the contagion effect is not rejected, given that the dynamic pairwise correlations are likely to be affected by herding behaviour and significant break dates.     

The return to value in Asian stock markets

This paper investigates the returns to value strategies in four Asian stock markets: Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. Hong Kong, Korea and Singapore exhibit value premia while Taiwan shows value discounts. The impact of firm characteristics on value premia differs across the four markets. The robustness tests indicate that the value premia are time-varying. They become greater in the post-crisis period across all four countries, indicating that high volatility during the crisis period did understate the value premia. The value strategy's excess return is sensitive to the sample selection rule and the firm size and liquidity effects. With tighter sample selection criteria, value premia tend to decline, which indicates that both the firm size effect and the liquidity effect are important sources of value premia. Unequal weighting assigned to financial variables in constructing the Average Price Rank (APR) based on the overall performance of single-variable approach does not necessarily improve the results.     

Financial crises and contagion vulnerability of MENA stock markets

This paper examines contagion vulnerability and the international and regional financial linkages of the MENA stock markets. The degree of vulnerability of those markets to global and regional financial crises will have important bearings on the respective economies' growth rate, and on their ability to diversify international and regional portfolios. Granger causality tests and impulse response functions reveal that while the GCC equity markets still offer international investors portfolio diversification potentials, those markets are relatively less vulnerable to global and regional financial crises. Moreover, even though the remaining MENA stock markets of Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia have matured and are now financially integrated with the world stock markets, they tend to exhibit more vulnerability to regional and international financial crises. Their vulnerability to international financial crises is due, on the one hand, to weak regional integration, and to greater economic and financial integration with the more advanced economies on the other.