Abstract/Summary

This paper investigates whether cointegration and causality relationships exist among the stock markets of the Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain (PIIGS) countries during the period 2005 to 2011. To accomplish our objective, we divide the sample period into two sub-periods (1 February 2005 to 30 June 2008 and 1 July 2008 to 30 June 2011). Considering that the financial crisis, which initiated in the USA in 2007, expanded to the EU in mid-2008, we call the first period 'pre-crisis period' and the second 'crisis period'. We apply a battery of tests such as Johansen cointegration, Granger causality, Gregory and Hansen residuals cointegration with regime shifts, fully modified ordinary least squares, as well as a multivariate GARCH model. Conventional cointegration and vector error correction analysis show long and short-run dynamics among PIIGS markets, especially during the crisis period. Further analysis into a regime switching and GARCH framework confirms the existence of cointegrating relationships among these stock markets while there are volatility spillovers between Greece and the rest of the countries. The findings have important implications for portfolio diversification benefits and the systemic nature of the crisis within the PIIGS countries.