GLOBALIZATION EFFECTS ON CONTAGION RISKS IN FINANCIAL MARKETS

Abstract

Financial globalization has opened international capital markets to investors and companies worldwide. However, the global financial crisis also caused massive stock price volatility due in part to global availability of market information. We explore ten EU member states (France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, and Spain), and the USA. The explored period is March 3, 2003 to June 30, 2016, and includes the effects of the global financial crisis of 2008. The purpose of the article is to determine whether there is a contagion effect between the Bulgarian stock market and the other examined stock markets during the crisis period and whether these markets are efficient. We apply an augmented Dickey-Fuller test, DCC-GARCH model, autoregressive (AR) models, TGARCH model, and descriptive statistics. Our results show that a contagion between the Bulgarian capital market and the eight capital markets examined did exist during the global financial crisis of 2008. We register the strongest contagion effects from the U.S. and German capital markets on the Bulgarian capital market. The Bulgarian capital market is relatively integrated with the stock markets of Germany and the United State, which serves as an explanation of why the Bulgarian capital market was exposed to financial contagion effects from the U.S. capital market and the capital markets of EU member states during the crisis. We register statistically significant AR (1) for UK, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Romania, and Bulgaria, and we can define these global capital markets as inefficient.