Stock market linkages and financial contagion: A cobreaking analysis

Financial crises have shown that dramatic movements in one financial market can have a powerful impact on other markets. This paper proposes to use cobreaking to model comovements between stock markets during crises and to test for contagion. We find evidence of cobreaking between developed stock markets. In emerging stock markets, the evidence of cobreaking is mainly due to the non-financial event of the World Trade Center terrorist attacks in 2001. We find evidence of short-term linkages during times of crisis but not contagion. These short-term linkages have important implications for investors, risk managers and regulators. (C) 2009 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.