International stock markets Integration and dynamics of volatility spillover between the USA and South Asian markets: evidence from Global financial crisis

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the cointegration and volatility spillover dynamics between the USA and South Asian stock markets, namely, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The main objective of this study is to provide the knowledge about integration of financial market and volatility spillovers before, during and after global financial crisis to investors, fund managers and policy-makers.Design/methodology/approachThe Johansen and Juselius cointegration test, Granger Causality test and bivaraite EGARCH model have been applied in this study to examine integration and volatility spillovers between selected stock markets.FindingsThe findings show that long-term integration between the USA market and South Asian emerging stock markets. It is found that USA stock market has causal relationship with emerging stock markets in short-term. The findings of EGARCH model reveal that asymmetric volatility spillover effects significant in all selected stock markets in pre, during and post-crisis periods. Furthermore, significant volatility spillover is found from stock markets of USA to all selected South Asian markets during and post-crisis periods. However, volatility spillovers from USA to India and Sri-Lanka markets are significant, while insignificant in case of Pakistani market in pre-crisis period. Overall, we find that returns and volatility spillover effects are higher in financial crisis period as compared to non-financial crisis period.Practical implicationsThe findings of this paper have important implications for investors, portfolio managers and policy-makers. They can take potential benefits from international portfolio diversification by considering all these facts. The understanding and knowledge of across volatility transmission help them to maximize the gains from diversification and minimize the risk. Policy-makers can develop such strategies which protect the markets of these economies from future financial crisis.Originality/valueAlthough in finance literature numerous studies have been conducted on integration between different stock markets, most of the studies investigated the integration and volatility spillovers between developed stock markets. However, many studies also analyzed the integration among emerging stock markets in literature review but it is hard to find studies in the context of South Asian stock markets on the effect of global financial crisis on stock markets. The main contribution of this study is to investigate the stock markets integration and volatility transmission between the USA and South Asia by considering the effect of recent 2007 US subprime financial crisis.