International spillovers in global asset markets

The paper empirically estimates the financial transmission between bond and equity markets within and across the four largest global financial markets - the United States, the Euro area, Japan, and the United Kingdom. We argue that international bond and equity markets are highly connected both within and across asset classes in a globalized world, where the complex transmission process across various financial assets is not restricted to just the domestic market. This paper employs identification through generalized forecast error variance decompositions to estimate spillovers across four systemic markets in a Vector Autoregression (VAR) framework. We find that asset prices react strongest to international shocks within the same asset class, but that there are also substantial international spillovers across asset classes. Rolling estimations analysis provides evidence that global asset markets have become more integrated and the bilateral relationships change over time. Our results are robust to specifications which take into account the monetary policy stance and include foreign exchange markets.