Market, Country and World Effects on Regional Equity Market Integration

Abstract

This study explores the fundamental driving forces of regional equity market integration in a trading bloc. The determinant factors are categorized into market attribute, economic fundamentals and world information. Our sample consists of 26 equity markets of ive regional trading blocs, namely AFTA, CER, EFTA, EU and NAFTA over the period of January 1999 to  August  2005.  We  measure  market  integration  based  on  pricing  errors  as  proposed  by Korajczyk (1996) and Levine and Zervos (1998). Using panel regressions, our results show that  equity  integration  in  these  trading  blocs  is  driven  internally,  where  only  individual-market  volatility  and  economic  fundamentals  play  a  signiicant  role  in  the  process.  Intra-bloc  trade  is  found  to  enhance  regional  equity  market  integration,  supporting  the  notion that  regional  convergence  extends  beyond  the  trade  sector  that  is  promoted  in  the  trade agreements.  We  also  document  regime  shifting  effects  during  stock  market  crises,  where most  of  these  markets  became  strongly  integrated  after  a  regional  crisis,  but  integration was signiicantly weakened during a crisis that affected the world markets. Also, the level of equity market integration differs across trading blocs, where the blocs with a smaller number of country members are relatively more integrated. ");} // -->activate javascript