NEW METHODOLOGY TO STUDY CONTAGION BETWEEN WESTERN AND EMERGING EUROPE: A SWITCHING COPULA APPROACH

This paper adapts and extends switching copula models to investigate whether financial contagion occurred between Western stock markets and their Central and Eastern European counterparts during the Global Financial Crisis. Our methodology focuses on tail dependence as a direct measure of codependence in crisis times and we apply it to two bespoke indices that cover the biggest Central and Eastern European stock markets. We find an overall increase in dependence between Western Europe and the transition region during the Great Recession. However, adding the Turkish stock market to our CEE regional indices reduces the duration of the impact of the crisis. These results suggest that the transition economies remain a valuable diversification source during periods of crisis.