Dynamic Modeling of Stock Market Interdependencies: An Empirical Investigation of Australia and the Asian NICs

This article examines the patterns of dynamic linkages among national stock prices of Australia and four Asian NIC stock markets namely, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong. By employing recently developed time-series techniques results seem to consistently suggest the relatively leading role of the Hong Kong market in driving fluctuations in the Australian and other NIC stock markets. In other words, given the generality of the techniques employed, Hong Kong showed up consistently as the initial receptor of exogenous shocks to the (long-term) equilibrium relationship whereas the Australian and the other NIC markets, particularly the Singaporean and Taiwanese markets had to bear most of the brunt of the burden of short-run adjustment to re-establish the long term equilibrium. Furthermore, given the dominance of the Hong Kong market in the region, the study also brings to light the substantial contribution of the Australian market in explaining the fluctuations to the other three markets, particularly Singapore and Taiwan. Finally, in comparison to all other NIC markets, Taiwan and Singapore appear as the most endogenous, with the former providing significant evidence of its short-term vulnerability to shocks from the more established market such as Australia.