Return and volatility spillover across equity markets between China and Southeast Asian countries

Purpose – This paper aims to study the daily returns and volatility spillover effects in common stock prices between China and four countries in Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia). Design/methodology/approach – The analysis uses a vector autoregression with a bivariate GARCHBEKK model to capture return linkage and volatility transmission spanning the period including the pre- and post-2008 Global Financial Crisis. Findings – The main empirical result is that the volatility of the Chinese market has had a significant impact on the other markets in the data sample. For the stock return, linkage between China and other markets seems to be remarkable during and after the Global Financial Crisis. Notably, the findings also indicate that the stock markets are more substantially integrated into the crisis. Practical implications – The results have considerable implications for portfolio managers and institutional investors in the evaluation of investment and asset allocation decisions. The market participants should pay more attention to assess the worth of across linkages among the markets and their volatility transmissions. Additionally, international portfolio managers and hedgers may be better able to understand how the volatility linkage between stock markets interrelated overtime; this situation might provide them benefit in forecasting the behavior of this market by capturing the other market information. Originality/value – This paper would complement the emerging body of existing literature by examining how China stock market impacts on their neighboring countries including Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia. Furthermore, this is the first investigation capturing return linkage and volatility spill over between China market and the four Southeast Asian markets by using bivariate VAR-GARCH-BEKK model. The authors believe that the results of this research’s empirical analysis would amplify the systematic understanding of spillover activities between China stock market and other stock markets.