Interdependence Of International Financial Market-- The Case Of India And U.S

This paper examines the nexus between domestic and foreign financial markets viz. Indian and U.S. money markets, equity markets and the common market for currency. We estimate volatility, spillovers-both in returns and in volatility, and cross-correlations in a multivariate framework for the financial markets. We utilize weekly data from June, 2000 to September, 2011 to model the interactions among the markets using a VAR(1)–MGARCH2(1,1) BEKK framework. We formulate an alternative VAR(1)–MGARCH(1,1) EWMA model to examine the robustness of the findings. We also include policy rates viz. effective federal funds rate and reverse repo rate as well as an indicator for the prevalent global investment climate (Federal Reserve of St. Louis’ financial stress index) in the analysis. Domestic spillovers in returns exist from the Indian stock market to the currency market. International spillovers from returns on U.S. stock market to returns on Indian stock market are evident. Further, we find that the economy’s policy rate significantly impacts the money market rate. The results also indicate that changes in financial stress index influence U.S. money market rates and returns on both the stock markets. The study reveals that volatility in all the markets surges post the global financial crisis of 2008-09. Spillovers in volatility across the markets are found to be present due to both innovations effects as well as volatility persistence. In particular, findings for the lagged volatility persistence effects suggest existence of significant bi-directional spillovers across the two stock markets and the currency market. Further, we observe the conditional correlations across assets to be time-varying.