The Effects of the Asian Crisis on Global Equity Markets

We investigate the comovement of daily returns from 13 Asian and non‐Asian markets before and after the advent of the Asian crisis in July 1997. For individual pairs of markets, our analysis shows a seven‐fold increase in feedback relations. For the markets as a group, we find a reduction in the number of common factors that generate returns. Since the post‐crisis period included the collapse of the Russian market and attack on the Brazilian real, we also analyze six three‐month subperiods surrounding the crisis. We find that the perceived increase in comovement during the post‐crisis interval was the result of subperiod transitory shocks.