How Crisis Contagiously Spreads Across Markets?

Abstract

The past twelve years were punctuated by increasingly complex dynamics of the cross-market interdependence and two ``once-in-100-year'' global financial crises, including the 2020 financial contagion through increased physical contagion during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper develops a non-linear financial contagion network via a dynamic mixture copula-EVT (extreme value theory) model to quantitatively detect and measure the complex nature of financial contagion. Considering the crisis transmission from both macroeconomic fundamentals and investor constraint perspectives, we identify and investigate the dynamics of transmission channels for both 2008 and 2020 financial crises. More specifically, we explore the wealth effect and portfolio rebalancing through the asymmetric tail contagion channels across 22 major emerging and developed stock markets and compare the differences between the two major crises. Moreover, motivated by the V-shape rebound in these two crises, we examine and find evidence that the transmission channels between the market melt-down and melt-up periods are different. Our findings shed new light on the dynamics of crisis transmission mechanisms across countries and provide important implications for international investors and policymakers.