Högskolan i Skövde

The paper examines the equity market price interaction between Australia and the European Union - represented by the UK, Germany and France - based on the Toda-Yamamoto causality test, which is bootstrapped with leveraged adjustments. A new information criterion is used to choose the optimal lag order. Weekly MSCI data covering the period 1988 to 2001 is used, divided into two subperiods to allow for a structural break arising from the ERM crisis of 1992. Results show that, during the period before the ERM crisis, no significant causal links exist between Australia and any of three EU countries. During the period after the ERM crisis, Australia also had no causal links with Germany and France but it had with the UK, with causality running from the UK to Australia but not vice-versa. Thus, Australian investors may find the German and French, but not the UK, equity markets, attractive venues for their international diversification. German and French, but not British, investors may also obtain the same benefit from the Australian equity market.

We examine the equity market price interdependence between China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan based on the [Journal of Econometrics 66 (1995) 225] causality test which we bootstrap with leveraged adjustments. A new information criterion is used to choose the optimal lag order. We cover the period January 1, 1993–September 10, 2001 taking into account the Asian financial crisis in 1997. We find that before the Asian crisis, the only interaction among the Chinese markets was between Singapore and the markets of Taiwan and Hong Kong with the causality running from the former to the latter. However, after the Asian crisis, the Chinese equity markets became more interdependent among themselves although Hong Kong remained non-influential.

We re-examine the long-term price interaction between the Australian equity market and futures market based on bootstrap causality tests with leverage adjustments to take into account multivariate ARCH effects and with the use of a new information criterion to choose the lag order. We cover the period January 1, 1988 to May 10, 2002. We find that the futures price Granger-causes the spot price but not vice-versa. Hence, our results indicate that price discovery starts with the futures market and information transmission between the two markets is not efficient.