University of Wollongong

Economics Working Paper Series 2006

http://www.uow.edu.au/commerce/econ/wpapers.html

The Interplay Between the Thai And Several Other International Stock Markets

Abbas Valadkhani Surachai Chancharat and Charles Harvie

WP 06-18 July 2006

The Interplay between the Thai and Several Other International Stock Markets
Abbas Valadkhani*, Surachai Chancharat , and Charles Havie** Abstract
The paper analyses the effect of various international stock market price indices and some relevant macroeconomic variables on the Thai stock market price index, using a GARCH-M model and monthly data from January 1988 to December 2004. It is found, inter alia, that (a) changes in stock market returns in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia in the pre-1997 Asian crisis, and changes in Singapore, the Philippines and Korea in the post-1997 era instantaneously influenced returns in the Thai stock market; (b) changes in the price of crude oil negatively impacted on the Thai stock market only in the pre-Asian crisis period; (c) volatility clustering (i.e. ARCH and GARCH effects) as well as a GARCH-M model were statistically significant only in the pre-1997 era; and (d) stock markets outside the region had no significant immediate impact on monthly aggregate returns in the Thai stock market. JEL Classification: E44, G14, G15 Keywords: Stock market; conditional volatility; macroeconomic variables; GARCH; Thailand. Fields of Research: Economics

**

1. Introduction
Stock market volatility appears now to move rapidly across countries. This has been possibly affected by the liberalization of capital markets in the past two decades. A clearer understanding of stock market determinants is very important for investors, regulators and academic researchers. Therefore, increased knowledge of stock market determinants is necessary in the settlement of pricing, hedging and regulatory policy. A number of analysts have investigated the impact of macroeconomic variables and international linkages on stock returns. Most of these studies, however, have focused on developed markets by using the Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (ARCH) model and the Generalized ARCH (GARCH) model. For instance, Schwert (1989) and Flannery and Protopapadakis (2002) tested the effect of domestic macroeconomic variables on stock volatility for the United States. They found weak evidence that such factors could predict stock market returns which are inherently volatile. Moreover, Hamao, Masulis and Ng (1990), Bae and Karolyi (1994) and Susmel and Engle (1994) focused on the international spillover of stock return volatility between Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States and found some evidence of volatility spillovers between these markets. In addition, the effect of foreign stock markets and macroeconomic news on the Australian stock market were further investigated by Kim and In (2002). The results indicated that the movements of the major stock markets (namely Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States) and some macroeconomic news significantly influence the Australian stock market. Other studies have examined the impact of macroeconomic variables and international linkages on the Thai stock market. Granger, Huang and Yang (2000) and Phylaktis and Ravazzolo (2005b) employed a cointegration model. Fang (2002) and Caporale, Pittis and Spagnolo (2002) used a GARCH model to analyse the relationship between stock returns and various exchange rates. Most studies find that the exchange rate leads stock returns, positively, in Thailand. In addition, Liu, Pan and Fung (1996) and Liu, Pan and Shieh (1998) used vector autoregressive analysis and cointegration models to investigate the international linkages between the stock markets of the United States and Asia-Pacific countries. The results indicated that the United States market influenced the conditional
*

Corresponding author, Dr Abbas Valadkhani, School of Economics and Information Systems, University of Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia. Tel: +612-42214022 Fax: +612-42213725 Email: [email protected]
**

School of Economics and Information Systems, University of Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia.

volatility of most Asian markets. Japan and Singapore had a significant and persistent impact on other Asian markets. On the other hand, Ng (2002), Baharumshah, Sarmidi and Tan (2003) and Phylaktis and Ravazzolo (2005a) reported no evidence to indicate that the international linkages among the South-East Asian stock markets was significant. In, Kim, Yoon and Viney (2001), however, used a GARCH model and found a significant volatility linkage between Korea and Thailand. Hence there is no consensus on the nature of these relationships. In the 1990s, most stock markets in Asia experienced considerable growth and turbulence. This process resulted in a profound change in Thailands economy. The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) significantly influences Thai economic development by providing a mechanism for resource re-allocation between different sectors of the Thai economy. As a rapidly developing emerging market the SET also plays an important role in a worldwide context by affecting international capital flows. The experience of the Thai stock market is probably typical of Asian stock markets in general because of its manageable size and diverse characteristics (Bos, Ding and Fetherston, 1998; Chusanachoti and Kamath, 2002). An understanding of the mechanisms of the Thai stock markets dynamics is, therefore, very important. This is the first study to investigate the impact of international linkages and macroeconomic variables on the Thai stock market using a GARCH model. The primary objective is to examine the impact of international stock markets and domestic macroeconomic variables on the Thai stock market price return, in the pre- and post1997 Asian crisis period, by applying various GARCH models. The main reason to use GARCH pertains to the fact that the variance of forecast errors depends on the size of the preceding disturbances. A generalized form of the conditional heteroscedasticity allows for lagged variances and further lagged values of the error term. Consequently, it is naturally expected that the GARCH model is an efficient way to deal with volatility clustering observed in residuals which usually occur in stock price data. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. The next section describes the data employed and presents the summary statistics as well as the unit root test results. The third section briefly discusses the GARCH models from a theoretical perspective in identifying the major determinants of Thai stock price variations. The fourth section presents various estimates of a model capturing the volatility of stock price returns. The penultimate section discusses the major findings and implications arising from this study. Finally, the last section provides some brief concluding remarks.

2. Data and Empirical Methodology

This study uses the stock price index of Thailand (TH) which is based on market capitalization, and calculated from the prices of all common stock on the market board. Moreover, we utilise fifteen other international stock price indices from various regions, including the following countries: Argentina (AR), Australia (AU), Brazil (BA), Germany (GE), Hong Kong (HK), Indonesia (IN), Japan (JA), Korea (KO), Malaysia (MA), the Philippines (PH), Russia (RU), Singapore (SG), Taiwan (TA), the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US). Monthly data are used covering the period January 1988 to December 2004 with a base value of 100 in December 1987, except for the stock price index of Russia covering the period December 1994 to December 2004 which has a base value of 100 in December 1994. This different base year has been modified accordingly. All stock indices were obtained from Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI: http://www.msci.com/equity/index2.html). In addition, the macroeconomic variables selected for Thailand include the consumer price index (CPI), the exchange rate (EX), the interest rate (on money) (MR), the money supply (M2) and oil price (OP) and were obtained from the International Financial Statistics (IFS: http://ifs.apdi.net/imf/logon.aspx) database (these five macroeconomic variables will be included in Equation (1) in the next section). All variables used are monthly observations spanning the time period from January 1988 to December 2004 and are expressed in terms of growth rates. Figures 1 and 2 present the graphs of the variables employed in this study. We present the full data in graphical form separating the pre-Asian crisis period (i.e. from January 1988 to December 1997 totaling 120 monthly observations) from the post-Asian crisis period (i.e. from January 1998 to December 2004 using 84 monthly observations). The post-1997 period is shown by the shaded areas in Figures 1 and 2.

Table 1. Descriptions of the data employed, January 1988-December 2004

Variable Mean 0.003 0.012 0.006 0.011 0.006 0.008 0.004 -0.001 0.003 0.004 0.002 0.013 0.005 0.004 0.005 0.008 0.003 0.002 -0.006 0.010 0.004 Median 0.007 0.015 0.005 0.023 0.008 0.007 0.007 -0.003 -0.007 0.007 0.002 0.030 0.008 0.002 0.004 0.012 0.003 0.000 0.011 0.009 0.007 Maximum 0.359 0.670 0.157 0.595 0.202 0.284 0.662 0.217 0.534 0.405 0.360 0.477 0.228 0.381 0.138 0.106 0.026 0.172 0.928 0.046 0.457 Minimum -0.416 -0.486 -0.166 -1.107 -0.279 -0.344 -0.525 -0.216 -0.375 -0.361 -0.347 -0.931 -0.231 -0.410 -0.111 -0.151 -0.007 -0.154 -0.855 -0.044 -0.246 Standard deviation 0.121 0.155 0.054 0.172 0.065 0.079 0.148 0.068 0.113 0.093 0.097 0.195 0.073 0.115 0.046 0.041 0.005 0.029 0.232 0.010 0.083 Skewness -0.386 0.617 -0.225 -1.366 -0.691 -0.195 0.423 0.100 0.341 -0.206 -0.009 -0.988 -0.483 -0.035 0.051 -0.570 0.847 1.729 -0.050 -0.151 0.568 Kurtosis 4.649 6.581 3.413 12.020 5.363 5.133 7.077 3.377 5.889 6.444 4.632 6.934 5.175 4.039 3.047 3.807 5.577 20.795 5.213 6.807 6.800 Jarque-Bera 28.164 121.319 3.162 751.402 63.715 39.983 147.384 1.550 74.940 102.270 22.644 96.906 48.173 9.220 0.107 16.588 80.811 2793.245 41.715 123.981 133.715 p-value 0.000 0.000 0.206 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.461 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.010 0.948 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000

ln Pt TH ln Pt AR = ln Pt1

ln Pt

AU
BA

= ln Pt = ln Pt

ln Pt

ln Pt GE = ln Pt 4 ln Pt HK = ln Pt 5 ln Pt
IN JA

= ln Pt

6 7

ln Pt = ln Pt

ln Pt KO = ln Pt 8 ln Pt MA = ln Pt 9 ln Pt ln Pt
PH

= ln Pt = ln Pt

10

RU

11

ln Pt SG = ln Pt12 ln Pt TA = ln Pt13 ln Pt
UK
US

= ln Pt = ln Pt

14

ln Pt

15

ln M tCPI = ln M t1 ln M tEX = ln M t2 ln M ln M
MR t M2 t

= ln M = ln M

3 t 4 t

ln M tOP = ln M t5

Sources: (1) http://www.msci.com/equity/index2.html and (2) http://ifs.apdi.net/imf/logon.aspx

Table 1. Descriptions of the data employed, January 1988-December 2004

Variable Mean 0.003
1

Median 0.007 0.015 0.005 0.023 0.008 0.007 0.007 -0.003 -0.007 0.007 0.002 0.030 0.008 0.002 0.004 0.012 0.003 0.000 0.011 0.009 0.007

Maximum 0.359 0.670 0.157 0.595 0.202 0.284 0.662 0.217 0.534 0.405 0.360 0.477 0.228 0.381 0.138 0.106 0.026 0.172 0.928 0.046 0.457

Minimum -0.416 -0.486 -0.166 -1.107 -0.279 -0.344 -0.525 -0.216 -0.375 -0.361 -0.347 -0.931 -0.231 -0.410 -0.111 -0.151 -0.007 -0.154 -0.855 -0.044 -0.246

Standard deviation 0.121 0.155 0.054 0.172 0.065 0.079 0.148 0.068 0.113 0.093 0.097 0.195 0.073 0.115 0.046 0.041 0.005 0.029 0.232 0.010 0.083

Skewness -0.386 0.617 -0.225 -1.366 -0.691 -0.195 0.423 0.100 0.341 -0.206 -0.009 -0.988 -0.483 -0.035 0.051 -0.570 0.847 1.729 -0.050 -0.151 0.568

Kurtosis 4.649 6.581 3.413 12.020 5.363 5.133 7.077 3.377 5.889 6.444 4.632 6.934 5.175 4.039 3.047 3.807 5.577 20.795 5.213 6.807 6.800

Jarque-Bera 28.164 121.319 3.162 751.402 63.715 39.983 147.384 1.550 74.940 102.270 22.644 96.906 48.173 9.220 0.107 16.588 80.811 2793.245 41.715 123.981 133.715

p-value 0.000 0.000 0.206 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.461 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.010 0.948 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000

ln Pt TH ln Pt
AR

= ln Pt

0.012 0.006 0.011 0.006 0.008 0.004 -0.001 0.003 0.004 0.002 0.013 0.005 0.004 0.005 0.008
1 t

ln Pt AU = ln Pt 2 ln Pt BA = ln Pt 3 ln Pt ln Pt
GE HK

= ln Pt

4 5

= ln Pt

ln Pt IN = ln Pt 6 ln Pt JA = ln Pt 7 ln Pt ln Pt
KO

= ln Pt = ln Pt

MA

ln Pt PH = ln Pt10 ln Pt RU = ln Pt11 ln Pt
SG
TA

= ln Pt = ln Pt

12

ln Pt

13

ln PtUK = ln Pt14 ln PtUS = ln Pt15 ln M ln M

CPI t EX t

= ln M = ln M

0.003 0.002 -0.006 0.010 0.004

2 t

ln M tMR = ln M t3 ln M tM 2 = ln M t4 ln M
OP t

= ln M

5 t

Sources: (1) http://www.msci.com/equity/index2.html and (2) http://ifs.apdi.net/imf/logon.aspx

Figure 1. Plot of stock price indices

Argentina
2000 350 300 250 1200 200 800 150 400 100 50 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 600 400 200 0 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 200 100 0 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004

Australia
1400 1200 1000 800

Brazil
600 500 400 300

Germany

1600

Hong Kong
700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 900 800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0

Indonesia
140

Japan
240 200 160 100 120 80 80 60 40 0 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004

Korea

120

40 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004

1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004

Malaysia
500 700 600 400 500 300 400 300 200 100 100 0 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 0

Philippines
700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004

Russia
450 400 350 300 250 200 150 100 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004

Singapore

200

1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004

Taiwan
600 700 600 500 500 400 400

Thailand
350 300 250 200

United Kingdom
700 600 500 400 300 150 100 50 200 100 0 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004

United States

300

300 200

200 100 100 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 0 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004

1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004

Sources: http://www.msci.com/equity/index2.html

Figure 2. Plot of five macroeconomic variables employed

Consumer Price Index
110 100 90 80 70 60 50 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 56 52 48 44 40 36 32 28 24 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004

Exchange Rate

Money Supply
7.0E+12 6.0E+12 20 5.0E+12 4.0E+12 3.0E+12 2.0E+12 5 1.0E+12 0.0E+00 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 0 15 25

Monetary Rate

10

1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004

Oil Prices
50

40

30

20

10 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004

Sources: http://ifs.apdi.net/imf/logon.aspx

Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics of the data. Sample means, medians, maximums, minimums, standard deviations, skewness, kurtosis as well as the Jarque-Bera statistics and p-values are presented. The highest mean return is 0.013 per cent in Russia and the lowest is -0.001 per cent in Japan. The standard deviations range from 0.010 per cent (the least volatile) for the growth rate of the money supply to 0.232 per cent (the most volatile) for the growth of the interest rate. The standard deviations of stock price indices are lowest in the developed economies of the US, UK, Australia, Germany, Japan and Singapore, while, on the other hand, the most volatile are in Russia, Brazil, Argentina, Indonesia, Thailand and Taiwan, respectively. All stock returns have excess kurtosis which means that they have a thicker tail and a higher peak than a normal distribution. The calculated Jarque-Bera statistic and corresponding p-value is used to test the null hypothesis that the monthly data follow a normal distribution. Most of the Jarque-Bera statistics and p-values reject the normality assumption at any conventional level of significance for all 21 variables, with the only exceptions being the monthly stock returns in Australia, Japan and the United Kingdom. Figures 3 and 4 show the plots of the stock returns and the monthly growth rates of a number of relevant macroeconomic variables for Thailand. In order to make robust conclusions about the time series properties of the data this study uses the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) test and the DF-GLS test introduced by Dickey and Fuller (1979) and Elliott, Rothenberg and Stock (1996), respectively. In this paper the lowest value of the Schwarz Criterion (SC) is used to determine the optimal lag length in the testing procedure. These lags augment the relevant regressions to ensure the error term is white noise and free of any serial correlation. Based on the results of the unit root tests presented in Table 2, we conclude that all 21 variables employed in this paper are I(1), as they were non-stationary in levels but stationary in first difference form.

Table 2. Unit root test results

Variables Constant -8.289*** -13.721*** -15.331*** -16.334*** -15.115
***

ADF Constant and Optimal lag trend 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 5 0 -8.266*** -13.841*** -15.301*** -16.306*** -15.105
***

Optimal lag 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0

Constant -1.656* -11.064*** -0.255 -14.416*** -14.781

***

ERS DF-GLS Constant and Optimal lag trend 6 0 2 0 0 0 0 2 5 1 0 3 0 3 5 6 4 0 0 11 0 -6.776*** -12.470*** -1.678 -15.580*** -15.048
***

Optimal lag 1 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 5 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 4 0 0 0 0

ln Pt TH ln Pt AR = ln Pt1 ln Pt AU = ln Pt 2 ln Pt ln Pt
BA

= ln Pt = ln Pt

GE

ln Pt HK = ln Pt 5 ln Pt IN = ln Pt 6 ln Pt = ln Pt
JA 7
8

-13.425*** -11.957*** -13.871*** -13.644

***

-13.448*** -11.959*** -13.836*** -13.620

***

-9.493*** -11.927*** -3.713*** -1.433 -6.357*** -11.321*** -2.127

** **

-12.321*** -12.018*** -13.735*** -2.539 -7.163*** -11.407*** -8.071

*** ***

ln Pt

KO

= ln Pt

ln Pt MA = ln Pt 9 ln Pt PH = ln Pt10 ln Pt ln Pt
RU SG

-7.317*** -11.301*** -9.529

*** ***

-7.323*** -11.396*** -9.485

*** ***

= ln Pt = ln Pt

11

12

-13.900

-13.931

-10.656

-13.153

ln Pt TA = ln Pt13 ln PtUK = ln Pt14 ln Pt ln M

US

-12.712*** -12.112*** -14.741***

1 t

-12.708*** -12.097*** -14.796*** -10.544

***

-2.398** -4.959*** -2.494** -3.602

***

-6.390*** -8.944*** -12.015*** -5.381

***

= ln Pt

15

CPI t

= ln M

-10.910

***

ln M tEX = ln M t2 ln M tMR = ln M t3 ln M
M2 t
OP t

-9.879*** -15.849*** -3.113** -10.743

***

-9.853*** -15.825*** -14.073*** -10.730

***

-9.106*** -15.373*** -0.703 -8.291

***

-9.630*** -15.801*** -8.823*** -10.038

***

= ln M = ln M

4 t
5 t

ln M

Note: ** and *** indicates that the corresponding null hypothesis is rejected at the 5 and 1 per cent significance level, respectively.

Figure 3. Plot of monthly stock returns

Argentina
.8 .6 .4 .2 .0 -.2 -.4 -.6 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 .16 .12 .08 .04 .00 -.04 -.08 -.12 -.16 -.20 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 -1.2 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 -.3 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 -0.8 0.0 .0 -0.4 -.1 -.2 0.4 .2 .1

Australia
0.8

Brazil
.3

Germany

Hong Kong
.3 .2 .1 .0 -.1 -.2 -.3 -.4 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 .8 .6 .4 .2

Indonesia
.3 .2 .1

Japan
.6

Korea

.4

.2 .0

.0 -.2 -.4 -.6 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 -.1 -.2 -.3 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004

.0

-.2

-.4 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004

Malaysia
.5 .4 .3 .2 .1 .0 .0 -.1 -.2 -.3 -.4 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 -.1 -.2 -.3 -.4 .4 .3 .2 .1

Philippines
0.6 0.4 0.2 0.0 -0.2 -0.4 -0.6 -0.8 -1.0 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004

Russia
.3 .2 .1 .0 -.1 -.2 -.3 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004

Singapore

1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004

Taiwan
.4 .3 .2 .1 .0 -.1 -.2 -.3 -.4 -.5 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 .4 .3

Thailand
.15 .10 .2 .1 .0 .00 -.1 -.2 -.3 -.10 -.4 -.5 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 -.15 -.05 .05

United Kingdom
.12 .08 .04 .00 -.04 -.08 -.12 -.16 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004

United States

1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004

Sources: http://www.msci.com/equity/index2.html

Figure 4. Plot of the monthly growth rate of the five macroeconomic variables
Consumer Price Index
.028 .024 .020 .016 .012 .008 .004 .000 -.004 -.008 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 .20 .16 .12 .08 .04 .00 -.04 -.08 -.12 -.16 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004

Exchange Rate

Money Supply
.06 .04 0.5 .02 .00 -.02 -0.5 -.04 -.06 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 -1.0 1988 1990 1992 0.0 1.0

Monetary Rate

1994

1996

1998

2000

2002

2004

Oil Prices
.5 .4 .3 .2 .1 .0 -.1 -.2 -.3 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004

Sources: http://ifs.apdi.net/imf/logon.aspx

3. An Application of the GARCH Model

As discussed earlier, we have segmented the sample period into the pre- and post-1997 Asian crisis. Initially, the following equation was estimated by the OLS method for the two periods separately:
k1 =15 i =1

ln Pt TH = +

i ln Pt i + i ln M ti + ut
i =1

k2 =5

(1)

However, in the pre-1997 period the estimated correlogram of squared residuals of such a model exhibited significant Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (ARCH) effects (see Figure 5). In order, therefore, to capture any possible ARCH and Generalized ARCH (GARCH) effects, we specified a GARCH-inmean (GARCH-M) in this paper. The GARCH model was developed by Bollerslev (1986) from the ARCH model previously introduced by Engle (1982). Both models establish the patterns of time varying volatility in returns. For a detailed account of these models see e.g. Bollerslev, Chou and Kroner (1992) and Pagan (1996). The GARCH-M (Bollerslev, 1986; Engle, Lilien and Robins, 1987) specification provides the forecast variance to vary over time and lag values to be included in the variance equation, which is a convenient and robust measure since it connects conditional volatility to the stock price returns in the following manner:

ln Pt TH = +

k1 =15 i =1

i ln Pt i + i ln M ti + ht + ut
i =1

k2 =5

(2)

q p u t = t 0 + i u t2i + j ht j i =1 j =1

(3)

ht = 0 + i u t2i + j ht j
i =1 j =1

(4)

where

Pt TH Pt i and M ti denote the value of the Thai stock index, the 15 international stock indices (as outlined in the previous section) and the five macroeconomic variables, respectively. Moreover, and 0 are the
corresponding intercept terms in the mean and variance equations, respectively,

shows the instantaneous

responsiveness of the Thai stock returns to the ith international stock returns,
th

Thai stock returns to the i macroeconomic variables, the estimated coefficient is referred to as a measure of the risk-return tradeoff in financial econometrics. In this paper this term indicates that the conditional mean of

shows the responsiveness of the

ln Pt TH depends on the conditional standard deviation obtained from Equation (4), ht is the conditional
variance which is dependent on lagged values of squared errors and lagged values of the conditional variance, i and j are the ARCH and GARCH coefficients, respectively, q is the order of the moving average ARCH term, p is the order of the autoregressive GARCH term. These types of models are usually employed in financial econometrics to test the effect of the expected asset risk on the expected return on an asset. Relevant studies include French, Schwert and Stambaugh (1987), Poon and Taylor (1992), Choudhry (1996), Engle (2001) and Andersen, Bollerslev, Diebold and Labys (2003) among others.

4. Empirical Results
There are 20 explanatory variables on the right hand side of Equation (1). We used the general-to-specific modelling approach to omit the insignificant variables in Equation (1) on the basis of a battery of maximum likelihood tests. At first we estimated this equation for the pre-1997 period. After excluding the insignificant variables a cursory look at the correlogram of residuals (See Figure 5) of the estimated parsimonious model, which does not capture the ARCH and GARCH effects, reveals a serious type of volatility clustering. However, once the ARCH and GARCH effects, or the conditional heteroscedasticity in the residuals, are modelled, as described in Equations (2) to (4), the correlogram of the resulting residuals appear to be more statistically acceptable (see Figure 6). According to Gujarati (2003) the correlogram of residuals at various lags that drift around zero imply that the estimated model is probably stationary. Table 3 presents the estimation results for Equations (1) and (2). As can be seen from the results, the parsimonious model estimated by OLS does not pass the ARCH test using various lags. However, once the ARCH effects are taken into account the reported GARCH-M model passes the diagnostic tests in Table 3. The Lagrange Multiplier (LM) test is used for testing serial correlation. The null hypothesis of the LM test is that there is no serial correlation up to lag order p (a prespecified integer). The results show no serial correlation up to order twelve for the estimated GARCH models. Therefore, it is important to capture these effects by a GARCH(p, q) process as in Equation (2). Assuming that 0 , Table 3 presents the econometric results of the GARCH-M model using the maximum likelihood method. One can observe that the estimated is highly significant and positive (i.e. +0.379) supporting the view that the higher the stock market volatility, the higher would be the rate of return. It should be noted that our preferred model has the lowest SC, the highest adjusted R , passes various ARCH tests reported in Table 3 and its resulting correlogram is well-behaved (see Figure 6). From Bollerslev (1986) the preferred equation also satisfies the stationarity of the parsimonious model, GARCH-M(q = 2, p = 0), as
2

+
i =1 i j =1

< 1 . It should be noted that the SC and significant spikes in the relevant correlogram of squared

residuals are used to determine the optimum values of p and q. In order of magnitude the estimated coefficients for Singapore (0.586), Malaysia (0.383) and Indonesia (0.122) were highly significant at the 1 per cent significance level, whereas the remaining 12 stock market returns were not statistically significant at any conventional level. Out of the five macroeconomic variables in the model only the oil price was significant, suggesting that higher growth rates in oil price can cause returns on the Thai stock market to plummet. The insignificant variables were excluded from the final reported models. We have also used the OLS method and Equation (1) to model the Thai stock return in the post-1997 crisis, and the results are reported in Table 4. As can be seen from Figure 7, the correlogram of residuals for this

10

model shows no sign of ARCH or GARCH effects. In addition, the estimated model passes the ARCH LM test with various lags and, compared to various estimated models (which are not reported in this paper due to the lack of space but they are available from the authors upon request), has the lowest value of the SC. Therefore, we do not need to use the ARCH and GARCH models for this period. In fact, the estimated ARCH and GARCH and coefficients were all insignificant, and as a result they have not been reported in Table 4. So we can conclude that the stock returns in the Philippines (0.529), Korea (0.411) and Singapore (0.402) were the only major variables that instantaneously impacted on the Thai stock market.

5. Major Findings and Implications

Based on Tables 3 and 4 the major findings of the paper can be summarized as follows. First, it appears that Singapore is the only country whose stock returns are positively related to that of Thailand in both the pre- and post-1997 crisis periods. This evidence is not surprising because Singapore is a major regional financial hub with extensive investment throughout the region, a price leader with its dominance in the Asian market and also the major producer of information. Moreover, international investors often overreact to news from Singapores market and place less weight on information from other Asian markets. Thus, innovations in Singapore could be used as an indicator to predict the performance of the Thai stock market. Second, apart from Singapore, in the pre-1997 period changes in stock returns in Indonesia and Malaysia were the most significant determinants of the returns in Thailand, but post-1997 the Philippines and Korea replaced these. This shift in importance in the post-1997 period is a result of capital controls imposed in Malaysia during 1998 and the economic turbulence in Indonesia, while Korea has attained more economic integration with Thailand. However, the case of the Philippines is more difficult to explain. Third, none of the stock markets in other countries outside the region played an important role in explaining the variation of Thai stock market returns before or after 1997. Fourth, consistent with previous studies, the effect of macroeconomic variables on the dependent variable was insignificant, with the only exception being changes in the price of oil. It appears that a rise in oil prices had a negative effect on stock returns prior to 1997 but became insignificant after 1997. Finally, the significant estimated coefficient on the time varying conditional variance h indicates that volatility itself exerted a positive impact on Thai stock market returns in the pre-Asian crisis period only.

6. Concluding Remarks
The main purpose of this empirical research has been to investigate how fifteen international stock markets and five relevant Thai macroeconomic variables influenced monthly stock market returns in Thailand in the pre- and post-1997 Asian crisis eras. It was found that the Singapore stock market influenced the Thai stock market significantly in both the pre- and post-1997 periods. Before 1997 the Indonesian and Malaysian stock markets were significantly related to the Thai stock market whereas after the crisis, Korea and the Philippines played a dominant role in explaining sources of variation in the monthly returns in the Thai stock market. Therefore, to a large extent one may conclude that the Thai stock market is very much influenced by the performance of its neighboring countries stock markets, but non-regional markets exerted an insignificant effect. This goes some way to explaining why the financial crisis of 1997 remained a primarily regional crisis.

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Figure 5. Correlogram of squared residuals before capturing GARCH effect for pre-Asian crisis period
Sample: 1988M01-1997M12 Included observations: 120

Source: authors calculations.

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Figure 6. Correlogram of squared residuals after capturing GARCH effect for pre-Asian crisis period
Sample: 1988M01-1997M12 Included observations: 120

Source: authors calculations.

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Figure 7. Correlogram of squared residuals before capturing GARCH effect for post-Asian crisis period
Sample: 1998M01-2004M12 Included observations: 84

Source: authors calculations.

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Table 3. Estimation results for the Thai monthly return model, ln Pt TH , in the pre-1997 crisis period
Variables Mean equation Intercept Coefficient -0.007 0.156 0.402
*** ***

OLS t-statistic -1.117 2.938 3.204 3.381 -2.811 -

p-value 0.266 0.004 0.002 0.001 0.006 -

Coefficient -0.030*** 0.122 0.383

*** ***

GARCH-M z-statistic -4.022 2.647 3.277 3.851 -3.670 2.708 1.991 -3.121 2.703 2.770

p-value 0.000 0.008 0.001 0.000 0.000 0.007 0.047 0.002 0.000 0.006

ln Pt ln Pt

IN MA

ln Pt SG ln M tOP

0.588*** -0.234*** -

0.586*** -0.207*** 0.379*** 0.001** -0.083 0.358

*** ***

ht
Variance equation Intercept
2 t 1

u u

2 t 2

ht21

0.423***

2 0.544 0.514 Adjusted R Log-L 149.370 158.469 Akaike -2.406 -2.474 Schwarz -2.290 -2.242 Overall F-stat 36.494*** 0.000 15.010*** 0.000 ARCH LM F-stat 1 lag 0.000 0.987 0.011 0.917 2 lag 6.038*** 0.003 0.054 0.948 3 lag 4.388*** 0.006 0.054 0.983 4 lag 4.180*** 0.003 0.060 0.993 8 lag 2.967*** 0.005 0.365 0.938 12 lag 2.965*** 0.002 0.448 0.939 Jarque-Bera 0.048 0.976 1.799 0.407 Note: ** and *** indicates that the corresponding null hypothesis is rejected at the 5 and 1 per cent significance level, respectively.

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Table 4. Estimation results for the Thai monthly return model, ln Pt TH , in the post-1997 crisis period
Variables Mean equation Intercept Coefficient 0.002 0.411 0.529
*** ***

t-statistic 0.237 5.681 4.678 3.081 -

p-value 0.814 0.000 0.000 0.003 -

ln Pt ln Pt

KO PH

ln Pt SG

0.402*** 2

ht
Variance equation Intercept
2 t 1

2 t 1

0.679 Adjusted R Log-L 94.992 Akaike -2.166 Schwarz -2.050 Overall F-stat 59.420*** 0.000 ARCH LM F-stat 1 lag 0.190 0.664 2 lag 0.234 0.792 3 lag 0.711 0.549 4 lag 0.694 0.599 8 lag 0.475 0.870 12 lag 0.878 0.573 Jarque-Bera 1.723 0.423 Note: *** indicates that the corresponding null hypothesis is rejected at the 1 per cent significance level.

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