A statistical procedure for testing financial contagion

The aim of the paper is to provide an analysis of contagion through the measurement of the risk premia disequilibria dynamics. In order to discriminate among several disequilibrium situations we propose to test contagion on the basis of a two-step procedure: in the first step we estimate the preference parameters of the consumption-based asset pricing model (CCAPM) to control for fundamentals and to measure the equilibrium risk premia in different countries; in the second step we measure the differences among empirical risk premia and equilibrium risk premia in order to test cross-country disequilibrium situations due to contagion. Disequilibrium risk premium measures are modelled by the multivariate DCC-GARCH model including a deterministic crisis variable. The model describes simultaneously the risk premia dynamics due to endogenous amplifications of volatility and to exogenous idiosyncratic shocks (contagion), having controlled for fundamentals effects in the first step. Our approach allows us to achieve two goals: (i) to identify the disequilibria generated by irrational behaviours of the agents, which cause increasing in volatility that is not explained by the economic fundamentals but is endogenous to financial markets, and (ii) to assess the existence of contagion effect defined by exogenous shift in cross-country return correlations during crisis periods. Our results show evidence of contagion from the United States to United Kingdom, Japan, France, and Italy during the financial crisis which started in 2007-08.