In this thesis, we use the dynamic factor model in state space, proposed by Stock and Watson (1989), to estimate the fluctuations of common factor by using lots of macroeconomic variables. Besides, with the combination of two stage dynamic factor analysis model which is proposed by Aruba et. al (2010), we want to discuss the possibility for the correlation of economic fluctuations across countries to change with different time periods. The thesis verifies the following three conclusions: First, the correlations of the economic fluctuations across countries are significant due to the regional economics. Second, the global or regional common shocks will increase the correlations of the economic fluctuations across countries. Finally, developed countries and emerging countries response differently during the Financial Tsunami from 2008 to 2009.

This study adopts Markov-switching ARCH model proposed by Hamilton and Susmel (1994) to explore the behavior of credit spreads for different bond ratings. Specifically, this paper examines the properties of credit spreads and the co-movements of spreads among different durations and credit ratings. The consideration of the population makes the outcome more precise. The contribution of this study is to add to the investors a knowledge as to the credit spread behavior and help them understand the lower rating or longer maturity bonds by the observation of the investment-graded bonds while there are more risks and uncertainties conceal in these high yield bonds or D-rated bonds. The conclusion of this paper may help investors understand credit risk management and thus build appropriate portfolios.

This paper examines return co-movements and volatility spillovers between major exchange rates before and after the introduction of euro. Dynamic correlations and VAR-based spillover index results suggest significant return co-movements and volatility spillovers, however, their extend is, on average, lower in the post-euro period. Co-movements and spillovers are positively associated with extreme episodes and US dollar appreciations. The euro (Deutsche mark) is the dominant net transmitter of volatility, while the British pound the dominant net receiver of volatility in both periods. Nevertheless, cross-market volatility spillovers are bidirectional, and the highest spillovers occur between European markets. (author's abstract)

Resulting from the deregulation and prosperity of the economic and financial sectors in Asia during 1980s, a significant increase in cross-bordered financial transactions ultimately accelerated the region of Southeast Asia to be on a process of financial integration and consequently diminished opportunities for portfolio diversification. Financial Integration is a multidimensional process through which allocation of financial assets becomes lastly borderless. This purpose of this paper is to examine a progress thus far in capital market integration or preferentially, the co-movement of the equity markets between the U.S. and the Southeast Asian nations: Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines by employing the methodology of Gregory and Hansen Cointegration and Error Correction Analysis (ECM). The consequence of the U.S. market performance on each Southeast Asian national markets are extensively analyzed by decomposing monthly price-index time series into three distinct sub-periods based on an occurrence of the Subprime Mortgage Financial Crisis in 2007. The results indicate that these four emerging markets had been considerable influenced by the U.S. market performance, regardless of crisis or non-crisis periods. Nevertheless, some countries like Indonesia and the Philippines acted differently during the pre-crisis and crisis sub-periods respectively due to their domestic market infrastructure and regulation adjustment. However, these two markets had eventually turned to share an interdependent long-run relationship with the U.S. equity market since the ending of the Subprime financial downturn. Moreover, this finding suggests that ongoing capital market integration in the Southeast Asian region would mitigate portfolio diversification benefits for investors by virtue of increasing in correlation among securities and assets. Therefore, more exhaustive investigation about equity market integration is significantly beneficial in macroeconomic and financial perspective.

Background: With the tremendous growth of the Green Bond (GB) market, understanding the relationship of the GB market with other financial markets gains importance. The Covid19 pandemic causing a recession in most major economies creates an opportunity to see the co-movements of the GB market with other financial markets under a period of economic crisis. Purpose: This study aims to use the economic contraction catalyzed by the 2020’s Covid-19 pandemic as a means to investigate the co-movements between the GB and the treasury bond, corporate bond, stock, and carbon markets during an economic recession. Through this, we intend to find if co-movements of the GB market have changed, and if so, how. Method: As the collected data is time-series data, Augmented Dickey-Fuller and Ljung-Box tests are utilized for preliminary testing. Thereafter, a univariate-GARCH model is used for volatility modeling. Moreover, the DCC-GARCH model has been conducted to determine the co-movements between the markets. Conclusion: The results of the study show that in the case of GB, treasury, and corporate bond markets, no considerable changes were observed in the co-movement among the two different sample periods. Moving to the stock and GB markets, it was found that the co-movement increased at the beginning of the crisis. However, for the whole crisis period, no substantial changes can be seen in comparison to the pre-crisis period. Furthermore, the co-movement between the two markets was found to be weak in general. Moving on to the results obtained for GB and carbon markets, at the start of the crisis, a sharp fall can be observed. When compared to the pre-crisis period, the co-movement showed a slight increase, yet very weak. Furthermore, it was observed that the co-movement between the two markets has been weak during the whole sample period.

Abstract Undoubtedly, liquidity is one of the most popular topics of research among the academia for decades. However intuitively-clear it is, scholars and experts have always found it not only hard but vague to define and measure. Moreover, researches or methods concerning commonality in liquidity are proposed one after another. Most of these works attempt to document what lies beneath the commonality by offering industry-wide or market-wide explanations. Nevertheless, this paper adopts an exact multivariate model-based structural decomposition methodology developed by Casals, Jerez and Sotoca (2002) to analyze the co-movement in market liquidity measures in a totally different manner. Except for decomposing three well-known market liquidity measures, share volume, dollar volume and turnover rate, of the Taiwan Stock Exchange Capitalization Weighted Stock Index (TAIEX) into trend, cycle, seasonal and irregular components, we conduct advanced bivariate analysis to extract common components, visualize them, and make a comparison among them at last. Evidence suggests that not only do these three liquidity proxies highly co-move with one another, but dollar volume seems to co-move slightly closer with share volume than with turnover rate. In the end, where this phenomenon, co-movement in market liquidity measures, accrues from is another long story and needs some further work not covered in this study.

在全球企業自由化及國際化的過程，金融機構的併購行為也變成大眾關注的議題，本論文第一部份，以亞洲的金融業為樣本，並且考量金融風暴對金融業併購的影響，實證結果發現，本文的5個併購假說在大部份的情況下，都被支持，而且金融風暴發生，的確可能改變跨國購併決策和影響因素之間的關係。其中，訊息成本假說中的語言及宗教二個代理變數，在金融風暴之後，他們對跨國併購決策都有較大且較顯著的影響力。第二部份，我們先探討OECD國家併購行為是否存在共同波動特性，實證結果支持 OECD 國家的購併活動具有共同波動的特性；此外，由狀態存續機率估計值發現樣本國停留在特定購併狀態的持續期間相當長，表示只要這些國家一起處於購併高峰期，則此共同購併高峰期會持續一段期間。相反的，若沒有發生共同購併高峰期，則在下一個時點出現共同購併高峰期的可能性也不高。從另一個角度解釋，亦即 OECD 國家購併潮的共同波動行為具有「長幅擺盪」(long swing) 的特質。最後，我們進一步考量歐盟金融業的併購活動和國家經濟成長率及股價報酬率二個要素的關係。實證結果發現在併購高峰期之下，不論歐盟金融業是處於併購交易的主併方或是被併方，股價報酬率都對併購活動皆具有正向影響；然而，國家的經濟成長率則會隨著歐盟金融業所處的併購主體而改變。此外，歐盟金融業的併購的共同波浪潮行為也具有「長幅擺盪」的特質。

The thesis analyses co-movement of 10Y sovereign bond yields of 11 EU mem- bers (Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Germany, Netherlands, Great Britain, Belgium, Sweden and Denmark) divided into the three groups (the Core of the Eurozone, the Periphery of the Eurozone, the states outside the Eurozone). In the center of attention are changes of co-movement in the crisis period, especially near the two significant dates - the fall of Lehman Brothers (15.9.2008) and the day, when increase of Greek public deficit was announced (20.10.2009). Main contribution of the thesis is usage of alternative methodol- ogy - wavelet transformation. It allows to research how co-movement changes across scales (frequencies) and through time. Wavelet coherence is used as well as wavelet bivariate and multiple correlation. The thesis brings three main findings: (1) co-movement significantly decreased in the crisis period, but the results differ in the groups, (2) co-movement significantly differs across scales, but its heterogeneity decreased in the crisis period, (3) near to the examined dates sharp and significant decrease of wavelet correlation was observable across lower scales in some states. JEL Classification C32, C49, C58, H63 Keywords Co-movement, Wavelet Transformation, Sovereign Debt Crisis, Sovereign Bond Yields,...

The dissertation consists of two essays. In the first essay we compare the performance of Islamic and conventional stock returns in Saudi Arabia in order to determine whether the Saudi market exhibits characteristics that are consistent with segmented markets and investor recognition effects. We sample the daily stock returns of all Saudi firms from September 2002 to 2015 and calculate important measures, including idiosyncratic volatility (Ang et al, 2006), market integration (Pukthuanthong and Roll, 2009), systematic turnover (Loughran and Schultz, 2005), and stock turnover and liquidity (Amihud, 2002). Integration tests report that Islamic stocks are more sensitive to changes in global and local macroeconomic variables than conventional stocks, supporting the hypothesis that the Islamic and conventional stock markets are segmented in Saudi Arabia. In addition, our results show that Islamic stocks have larger number of investors, lower idiosyncratic risk, higher systematic turnover, and more liquid than conventional stocks, which supports the investor recognition hypothesis. Our results provide new evidence on asset pricing in emerging markets, the evolving Islamic financial markets, and the potential impact of other implicit market barriers on global financial markets. In the second essay we examine the effects of shared beliefs and personal preferences of individual investors on their trading and investment decisions. We anticipate that the process of classifying stocks into Shariah compliant (Islamic) and non-shariah compliant (conventional) has an effect on investibility and acceptance of the stock especially by unsophisticated or individual investors. The wide acceptance of Islamic stocks between individual investors promote and facilitate the circulation of firm-specific information between certain groups of investors. Our results indicate that stock classification has an effect on the stock price comovement through increased stock trading correlation between the groups of Islamic investors. The commonality in preferences between Islamic stocks’ holders generate commonality in trading activity and in stock liquidity. We find that classifying a stock as an Islamic stock increases its price comovement with other Islamic stocks and also increases its commonality in liquidity.

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