Impact of economic indicators on development of capital market

Abstract

The capital market is one of the most important elements of any healthy, well-functioning economy. The volume and value of executed capital market transactions are affected not only by the number of issuers and investor’s willingness to buy, but also by economic development in the broadest sense. This article discusses the relationship between macroeconomic indicators and development of stock market index in different countries. It assesses the direction and intensity of relationships between macroeconomic indicators and stock market index and explains possible causes of these conditions. Analysis of the relationship is carried out in different countries with different levels of economic development, both in Europe and overseas. Emphasis was put on the selection of those countries, which were significantly affected by the economic recession. The indicators that affect value of stock market index were selected based on economic theory. Among them belong: gross domestic product, inflation, interest rate, export, and import and unemployment rate. After determining the degree of dependence between macroeconomic indicators and value of stock market index, countries were grouped together in clusters. Clustering was therefore not conducted on the basis of the values of macroeconomic indicators of a country, but on the basis of these indicators having a similar effect on the value of the stock market index. Before cluster analysis, input matrix of variables was subjected to factor analysis to reduce the original number of variables.