Spillovers Among Regional And International Stock Markets

Realizing the greater risk by the increase in the level of financial market integration, this study investigates the dynamic of international and regional stock markets co-movement among Asian countries with the world leading market, the US. The data utilized in this study comprises of weekly closing prices for four stock indices, that consists of two developing markets (Malaysia and China) and two developed markets (Japan and the US), and encompasses the period from January 1996 to December 2012. Multivariate Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (MGARCH) model with the BEKK parameterization is employed to investigate the mean and volatility spillover effects among the selected stock indices. The results show significant mean spillover not only from the larger developed markets to smaller developing markets but also from the smaller developing markets to larger developed markets. Volatility spillover between the developed markets is found to be smaller than that between the developing markets. Conditional correlations among the stock markets are found to increase over the sample period. The findings of significant mean and volatility spillovers are considered as bad news for international investors as it reduces the benefit from portfolio diversification but act as useful information for investors to be more aware in diversifying their investment or stock selection.