Transmission of Shocks through Stock Markets Channel: The Case of the CEECs

Many scientists and economists state that the degree of global integration of the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) stock markets is very low. However, the recent turmoils in the major financial centers in USA, China, etc. raise the question about the possible transmission of the global shocks to the CEECs stock markets despite the low degree of financial integration. The main research questions are: can the spillover effect transmit from the major stock markets on the CEECs stock markets and what type of shocks cause the cross-border contagion risk transmission to the CEECs stock markets? The objective of this study – to identify the transmission of global shocks through stock markets channel in the CEECs. The research methods: the systemic, logical and comparative analysis of the scientific literature and statistical methods: Dynamic Conditional Correlation Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (DCC-GARCH) model. The empirical results of this study suggest that the highest degree of global and regional integration of the stock markets was observed in Poland's, Czech Republic's, and Hungary's stock markets that can be explained by higher development level of these stock markets comparing to other CEECs. The collapse of Lehman Brothers bank in United States in 2008 was the most significant shock transmitted to CEECs stock markets. The empirical results also suggest that the transmission of other systemic shocks (e.g. the Middle East financial markets crash (May 2006), Greek debt crisis (April 23, 2010), Portugal's debt crisis (May 16, 2011)) was also observed on some of the CEECs countries.