CONTAGION AND INTERDEPENDENCE IN AFRICAN STOCK MARKETS

Events in emerging financial markets during the past decade have given rise to a fevered debate about the role of global integration in capital markets. The Mexican peso crisis of 1994, the Asian crisis of 1997 and the subsequent Russian and Brazilian crises of 1998 have provided new data with which to examine the transmission of financial variable movements from one country to another. Are African markets caught up in the same web, or are they more \ndependent on co-movements with each other? When emerging markets were first becoming a viable asset class in the early 1990s, Harvey (1995) suggested that part of their initial appeal was their low correlations with developed markets. It was assumed that they would then serve neatly as a hedge in a global portfolio. But as Harvey (1995) also showed, emerging \nmarket correlations with developed markets were changing through time, as they became more integrated into the global financial system.