Testing financial contagion on heteroskedastic asset returns in time-varying conditional correlation

We suggest that there is a significant relationship between cross-market comovement and time varying volatility. The time-varying component of cross-market dependence is attributed to the intertemporal risk-return adjustment by rational, risk-averse investors who systematically revise their expectation in response to changing volatility. To reflect the time-varying component of cross-market dependence, we propose a time-varying correlation test for contagion. Our results show that out of the countries reporting contagion evidence under the constant correlation test, none of the countries exhibits contagion evidence from the 1997 Asian crisis. We conclude that a high level of cross-market correlation during a crisis reported as contagion evidence under the standard constant correlation test is mostly due to the high level of cross-market co-movement resulting from the intertemporal risk-return adjustment.

► There is a strong link between cross-market comovement and time varying volatility.
► Cross-market comovement is attributed to the intertemporal risk-return adjustments.
► We propose a time-varying conditional correlation test for financial contagion.
► We found that there was no contagion evidence during the 1997 Asian crisis.
► High comovement as contagion evidence is due to the intertemporal adjustment.