Stock market integration in the EURO area: segmentation or linear modelling misspecification?
Jawadi, Fredj ; Arouri, Mohamed El Hedi ; Nguyen, Duc Khuong 等
I. INTRODUCTION
Determining the extent to which stock markets are integrated is an
empirical question which has a decisive impact on a number of issues
pertaining to financial market theory. In general, stock markets are
said to be perfectly integrated if they enable investors to exchange
stocks that share the same characteristics under the same conditions
regardless of the investor's location and if they allow domestic
and foreign firms access to similar external financing. Financial
Integration (FI) has obvious economic and financial implications. It
offers improved opportunities for risk reduction and diversification,
leads to better allocation of capital across investment options, an
increase in liquidity, and greater economic growth.
FI has recently been stepped up worldwide, especially in Europe.
(1) In fact, stock markets in the Euro Area (EA) have shown evidence of
significant FI over the last few decades, with considerable development,
particularly after the introduction of the Euro. Several factors can
account for this increase in FI in EA stock markets. Firstly, the
standardization of information and the harmonization of infrastructures
as well as financial instruments, legislation, regimentation, taxes,
rules and regulations have led to fast convergence between the financial
systems of the different member states. Secondly, the restructuring of
European banking business, the liberalization process, the
implementation of the Financial Service Action Plan, and rapid
transmission of information via the European Central Bank (ECB) and the
European System of Central Banks have helped to develop a single
financial service market in the EA (e.g., Baele et al., 2004). Thirdly,
the removal of restrictions and barriers on capital movements, the
synchronization in business cycles, and the suppression of exchange
rates, exchange-rate risk and cross-border restrictions on investor
activities, may have substantially accelerated FI in the region.
As Worthington et al. (2003) noted, only a few studies in the
literature have examined European capital market integration in the EU
as a whole. These studies suggest greater integration between the main
European stock markets in recent years, suggesting that interdependence
among EA markets has increased with the stepping up of economic
integration following the move to a single currency. Espitia and
Santamaria (1994) identified high correlation between daily equity
returns in all the markets. Chung and Lai (1999) however, pointed to
significant long-term comovements in French, German and Italian stock
market indices, but no evidence of cointegration with Belgium and the
Netherlands. Meric and Meric (1999) show an increase in the long-term of
price comovements and a decrease in international diversification benefits for the twelve largest European equity markets. Worthington et
al. (2003) studied the FI hypothesis before, during and after the
adoption of the Euro using various econometric tools: Granger-causality
tests, generalized variance decomposition and cointegration techniques.
The authors identified significant linkages between European markets.
They showed that the European equity markets they studied were closely
linked and integrated both before and after the transition to the Euro.
Finally, Hardouvelis et al. (2006) investigated whether the convergence
process of European economies toward Economic and Monetary Union has led
to increased FI using an international capital asset pricing model (CAPM), which allows for a time-varying degree of integration that
measures the importance of EU-wide risk relative to country-specific
risk. They found significant degree of recent FI between the main
European stock markets.
Overall, most of the empirical studies have suggested significant
FI phenomenon between the main stock markets (Germany, France, the UK,
and Switzerland) but mixed results concerning the smaller equity markets
(Belgium, Ireland, Austria, Norway, and the Netherlands). In addition,
FI seems to correlate with advances in EU economic convergence, and much
of the FI is spread across the whole EU rather than simply being limited
to the members who belong to the EA and the transition to Euro. Some
studies have shown a net increase in FI in this area while others have
pointed to the weakness of the FI and to segmentation. The latter
attribute this to a number of technical and legal difficulties and
barriers, significant differences between the infrastructures of the
markets, and securities preventing FI in this area. They also cite some
mergers such as NYSE-EURONEXT and NASDAQ-OMX as unfavorable factors to
FI in the EA. To sum up, there is no unanimous position with regard to
FI properties and the statistical process characterizing FI in the EA.
Earlier studies have mainly employed two methodological approaches
in testing for stock market integration in the EA: asset pricing models
and linear cointegration tests. The results obtained from the first
approach are highly sensitive to the validity of the assumed financial
models. In fact, testing for FI on the basis of a financial model (CAPM
and multifactor models for example) incorporates two aspects: the
integration of the markets studied and the validity of the model used.
However, it is now widely known that available financial models are
often miss-specified and thus the results obtained from this approach
need to be regarded carefully. In this paper, we choose to investigate
FI in the EA within the framework of cointegration tests. Using this
approach, we do not need to assume any specific financial model since we
test for common stochastic trends among EA stock market indices. The
sources of the common trends are systematic factors that simultaneously
impact stock markets in the EA and thus reflect the FI process. The more
stock market indices are cointegrated, the stronger the evidence of
integration.
Using two types of modeling, linear and nonlinear tools, our paper
attempts to clarify whether EA stock markets are integrated or not. The
answer to this question is important as it has clear implications for
European financial and economic policies. In addition to the nonlinear
FI tests for the EA stock markets we propose, this paper contributes to
the literature by searching for the sources of the mixed conclusions
arising from previous studies on FI in the EA. This can help us to
understand whether the mixed results from previous studies are due to
the segmentation between stock markets in the region or to the
weaknesses in the methods used. Our reasoning is that most of the
previous empirical studies on FI in the EA have used linear modeling
techniques. These methods limit FI dynamics to being linear and
continuous with constant speed over time. However, the introduction of
the Euro, the recent increase in the number of investors, the ongoing
market liberalization and the present financial crisis may have induced
some asymmetry, irregularity and nonlinearity in the FI process,
invalidating the linear framework. Thus, one of the main contributions
of this study is the use of new nonlinear econometric techniques to
investigate FI in the EA.
The remainder of the article is organized as follows. The second
section briefly explains the empirical tests used. The key empirical
results are reported in the third section and in the last section, we
offer some concise conclusions.
II. ECONOMETRIC MODELING
We start from the proviso that stock markets are integrated if
their stock prices are linearly cointegrated, meaning that they may
diverge in the short-term but as long as they retain some common
properties they will converge to equilibrium in the long-term. This
equilibrium is defined by the long-term linear cointegration
relationship, while the short-term stock price dynamics is reproduced
using a Linear Error Correction Model (LECM). First, we check the FI
hypothesis by linear techniques. But, since we could wrongly reject the
FI hypothesis because of the weakness of these techniques in
apprehending nonlinearities in the market integration process, we then
apply more robust nonlinear tests. In particular, we use nonlinear
adjustment tests introduced by Luukkonen et al. (1988) and developed by
Van Dijk et al. (2002). This offers an approach that enables us not only
to check FI in the presence of market frictions, but also to specify a
time-varying FI process that is active per regime only when stock price
deviations exceed a certain threshold.
We briefly describe the main steps of our econometric methodology.
First, we check the linear cointegration hypothesis. Two variables,
[X.sub.t] and [Y.sub.t] (here respectively European and national stock
market indices in logarithms), that are I(1), could be linearly
cointegrated in the long-term if a linear [z.sub.t] combination between
them is stationary. The long-run cointegration relationship is then
given as follows:
[[??].sub.t] = [Y.sub.t] -[[??].sub.0] - [[??].sub.1][X.sub.t] (1)
where [[??].sub.t] is the residual series, [[??].sub.0] and a
[[??].sub.1] are the estimators of the cointegration relationship. The
linear short-term dynamics of stock prices is reproduced through a LECM:
[MATHEMATICAL EXPRESSION NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (2)
where [lambda] is the linear adjustment term defining the linear
mean-reversion speed.
But, this modeling may not be suitable for investigating FI between
stock markets since several FI characteristics can escape from the
traditional linear cointegration tests. To reproduce and apprehend the
main properties of the FI process, we propose nonlinear cointegration
tests that are more robust than linear tools. In practice, we implement
Van Dijk et al.'s (2002) two-step techniques. In the first step, we
test for linear cointegration using traditional unit root tests. In a
second step, we implement nonlinear adjustment tests. In particular, we
apply Lagrange Multiplier tests (LM) developed by Luukkonen et al.
(1988) to the residuals of the linear cointegration relation. (2) The
rejection of linearity indicates a nonlinear mean reversion in the data,
which could conclude in favor of FI even if the linear cointegration
hypothesis is rejected. Indeed, this suggests that FI is checked only by
regime to some extent. For instance, we could imagine two regimes in the
stock market integration process. In the first regime, no adjustment
takes place and the stock price is generally distanced from the
financial market equilibrium, i.e., the whole EA stock market. Stock
price deviations from the equilibrium last a very long time, can be
divergent and have a unit root, even though they do not necessarily
follow a random walk. In the second regime, stock price adjustment is
relatively active. Its speed depends on the price disequilibrium size
and its deviations approach a white noise. Overall, stock price
deviations may follow a nonlinear process that is mean-reverting with a
convergence speed that varies directly with the size of the stock price
deviations from the equilibrium.
III. EMPIRICAL RESULTS
A. Data and Preliminary Results
The data consists of the monthly stock market index closing prices
of the Euro-10 member states (Germany, Austria, Belgium, Spain, Finland,
France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands and Portugal) and the European
stock index. All indices are obtained from Morgan Stanley Capital
International (MSCI) and encompass the period from January 1970 to
December 2007. (3) In addition, to test the impact of the transition to
a single currency and the application of new financial directives on FI,
two time-series sub-periods are retained: January 1970--December 1999
and January 2000--December 2007. Besides the comparison between the
countries studied, this enables to test the hypothesis whereby the
introduction of the Euro has increased FI in the EA.
To do this, we began by performing bivariate and multivariate
cointegration tests to check FI using Engle and Granger's (1987)
two-step estimation techniques and the standard Johansen (1988) method.
We also conducted nonlinear modeling tests to capture the possible
asymmetry and nonlinearity that characterize the comovements of the EA
stock markets. (4) Precisely, we first studied the European and national
stock price integration order for the two sub-periods. Inspection of
their graphs suggests that stock price indices are not a priori stationary. More importantly, the graphs also suggest that comovements
between stock prices have been stronger in periods of crises,
particularly in the last few years, although comovements are more
illustrious and distinguished for certain stock markets than for others
(Austria, Belgium, Germany, France and the Netherlands). We then tested
for the presence of unit root in the series using Dickey-Fuller (1981)
and Phillips-Perron (1997) tests and showed that none of the stock price
series was found to be integrated of one order for the two sub-periods.
(5) Second, we explored the statistical properties of the Euro-10 stock
equity returns, computed their descriptive statistics and retained
several conclusions. (6) The symmetry and normality hypothesis are
firmly rejected for all stock market returns over the two subperiods.
The negativity of skewness for all of the EA markets can be associated
with possible nonlinearity and asymmetry in stock price dynamics. The
reduction of standard deviations over the second sub-period is an
indicator of FI between these markets.
Third, we investigated the correlation between the national stock
returns and the European market returns before and after the transition
to a single currency in order to determine the effect of the Euro's
adoption on FI in the EA (Tables 1 & 2). From Table 3, we note that
not many stock market indices appear to correlate strongly with the
European stock market index. Accordingly, strong evidence of FI is
suggested for France, Germany and the Netherlands, since their
correlation coefficients are closer to the unity. For the other markets,
FI is somewhat partial or weak. However, after the introduction of the
Euro, correlations between national and European market returns
increased significantly as indicated by Meric and Meric (1999), Chung
and Lai (1999), Worthington, Katsuura and Higgs (2003) among others.
Thus, FI is a priori confirmed for France, Germany, the
Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Italy at least. Fourth, to extend this
modeling, we applied cointegration tests which are more powerful than
correlation tests and yield dynamic analysis over the short and
long-term.
Table 1 reports the bilateral correlations between the stock
indexes of the EA over the first sub-period. We show strong evidence of
correlation between French, German and Dutch indexes and the European
prices. Table 2 presents the bilateral correlations between the stock
indexes of the EA but over the second sub-period. Bilateral correlation
and correlation with the MSCI European index are more important and
significant. Besides, other indexes are more significantly correlated
between one another and with the European index.
The time-varying dynamics of all stock market prices in logarithm over the two sub-periods, not presented here in order to conserve spaces
but available upon request, show that the Euro-10 markets under
consideration have followed more similar patterns in the second
sub-period.
Table 3 summarizes the results of the nonlinear cointegration tests
that check the null hypothesis of linear cointegration against its
alternative of nonlinear cointegration. The test is carried out for
several values of the parameter of delay (d) and conducted over the two
sub-periods. For each p-value that is under 5% (respectively 10%), the
null hypothesis of linear cointegration is rejected at the 0.05 level
(respectively 0.10), but the optimal value of d is that for which the
null hypothesis is the most rejected (the p-value is minimum).
B. Linear Cointegration Tests
We first carried out Engle and Granger's procedure and checked
for linear cointegration by testing the stationarity of the residuals
from the long-term relationship between European and individual stock
market indices. Our findings highlight different results among the
various countries and between the sub-periods. According to the linear
cointegration tests, cointegration and the FI hypotheses are only
improved for France, at the 10% level. When comparing the estimated ADF statistics with those of Engle and Yoo (1987), the linear cointegration
hypothesis is indeed rejected for all the other indices, indicating that
these markets are somewhat segmented (7). Over the second sub-period,
the linear cointegration hypothesis is verified for France, Germany and
the Netherlands at the 5% level, and for Belgium, Spain, Italy, Portugal
and Ireland at the 10% level, indicating FI for these markets. This
suggests a positive effect of the Euro on the FI process for France and
Portugal and highlights the FI increase after 1999. However, the stock
markets in the other EA member states appear to remain segmented after
the adoption of the Euro, indicating that their integration process and
dynamism remained similar and relatively unchanged before and after the
transition to the single currency.
An interesting avenue for research would be to focus on how
trustworthy these findings are. It would also be useful to check whether
EA stock markets are still really segmented in spite of the adoption of
a single currency, or whether they are relatively integrated and FI is
increasing thanks to the Euro, and whether the linear modeling
techniques used to investigate FI benefits have generated inaccurate
findings since they are biased. Indeed, even though several studies have
focused on FI, this question has not been appropriately addressed and
developed to date. To do this, we examined FI by multivariate
cointegration analysis and by more robust tools (nonlinear cointegration
tests), and compared the obtained results.
One advantage of Johansen's approach is that it allows us to
check cointegration in a multivariate framework, so that we can
simultaneously test for linkages between European and EA stock market
price indices. Johansen's approach tests for a number of
cointegration relations using Johansen's Trace test (1988). In view
of our findings, we reject the null hypothesis of "no
cointegration" for both periods and we accept the alternative
hypothesis of "at most two cointegration equations" over the
second sub-period (2000-2007). This provides evidence of partial FI
between the EA stock markets but the estimation of the Vectorial Error
Correction Model (VECM) does not indicate significant evidence of
comovements toward the equilibrium for certain countries, even though
estimation results of VECM are more significant after 1999. The latter
finding means that FI between European countries increased after the
adoption of the Euro. (8) Overall, FI appears to be stronger after 1999.
However, the poor compatibility of Johansen tests with those of
correlation tests and the Engle-Granger approach seems to corroborate the literature review described above regarding the absence of unanimous
conclusions regarding FI of the EA member states when linear modeling is
used. In order to check whether this conclusion is due to the
misspecification of linear modeling or rather because stock markets are
really segmented in spite of the adoption of the Euro, the last step in
our FI investigation was to apply more robust tests: nonlinear
cointegration tests.
C. Testing FI with Nonlinear Cointegration Tests (9)
We adopted Van Dijk et al.'s (2002) approach to carry out the
tests in order to check the degree of FI between EA countries. We
applied these nonlinearity tests to examine whether stock price
adjustment dynamics are symmetric or asymmetric, linear or nonlinear.
Indeed, a structural shift in stock price adjustment can imply
discontinuities in stock price dynamics and lead us to conclude against
FI. However, stock markets can be integrated by regimes and this
structural change is simply due to a transition from one regime to
another. Our findings show that nonlinear cointegration tests are more
robust than the usual cointegration techniques. Indeed, the application
of [LM.sub.3] tests over the two sub-periods yielded a number of
important results. Concerning the first sample, linearity is rejected
for France and Germany at the 5% level and for Belgium and the
Netherlands at the 10% level, suggesting a significant nonlinear mean
reversion of their stock market indices toward equilibrium. These
results are consistent with those of Richards (1995), Kwan, Sim and
Cotsomitis (1995), and Chung and Lai (1999) among others, who point to
strong evidence of FI and linkages between the largest stock markets but
weak or mixed results for smaller markets.
For the second sub-period, the results are statistically more
significant, indicating a considerable increase of FI in the EA. Indeed,
the French and German stock markets are integrated more strongly since
linearity is rejected far more for all the possible values of the delay
parameter d, highlighting significant comovements of their stock prices
toward the European market index. Some FI proof is also found for the
Netherlands. Globally, our findings show strong evidence of a positive
impact of the adoption of the Euro for Belgium, Italy and Spain since
their stock markets became statistically and significantly more
integrated after 1999. FI hypothesis is retained for Portugal at the 10%
level. However, FI is not accepted for Ireland, Finland and Austria.
This may be due to the size factor of their stock markets.
Our findings supplant then those of linear tools to investigate the
FI hypothesis between the Euro-10 stock markets, suggesting strong
evidence of FI and comovements between these markets and indicating a
structural break that occurs a priori after 1999 and an increase in FI
in this area. They also have major implications for international
portfolios since for most of the members, the transition to a single
currency offers better opportunities for risk sharing and
diversification, better allocation of capital and increase in liquidity,
and more interdependence between stock markets. It reflects the impact
of financial linkages between member states in the region thanks to the
standardization of information, the harmonization of infrastructures and
financial instruments, the implementation of the Financial Service
Action Plan, and the centralization of information by the ECB.
Finally, these results highlight the weaknesses and
misspecifications of the linear tools commonly used to check FI. Indeed,
our results show an on-off FI process that is activated by regime when
stock price deviations exceed a certain threshold conditioned by the
level and degree of harmonization between the EA member states financial
systems. In the first regime (before 1999), stock markets are relatively
segmented and stock prices deviate from the European market index
because of the importance of heterogeneity and differences between the
member states financial systems and quotations. In the second regime,
notably after the transition to the Euro, the different attempts to
harmonize and liberalize involve common European financial systems and
rules stimulating FI. This type of FI mechanism can escape from linear
modeling and lead to serious erroneous results with respect to FI.
IV. CONCLUSION
This paper studied FI between EA stock markets over four decades
using linear and nonlinear techniques. Our results suggest threshold
stock market integration between most of the EA stock markets. As Meric
and Meric (1999), Worthington et al. (2003) and Hardouvelis et al.
(2006) indicated, FI has increased, notably following the adoption of
the Euro. Using recent developments in nonlinear modeling, we highlight
strong evidence of a structural break after 1999 and significant
nonlinear mean-reversion for stock market prices. To extend this
research, the nonlinear mean-reversion in stock prices needs to be
modeled.
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ENDNOTES
(1.) FI has been an ongoing goal for the European Union (EU) for a
number of years (Worthington, Katsuura and Higgs, 2003).
(2.) The implementation of nonlinear adjustment tests (LM tests) is
briefly described in the first appendix. For more details, see Van Dijk,
Terasvirta and Franses (2002).
(3.) For Finland, Portugal and Ireland, data have been available
since January 1982 and January 1988 respectively.
(4.) All empirical results are presented in appendices.
(5.) The results of the unit root tests are available upon request.
(6.) These results are also available upon request.
(7.) We do not report results of linear cointegration tests to save
space, but the latter are available upon request.
(8.) The estimation results of VECM are not reported in detail to
save space, but are also available on request.
(9.) We don t present these tests to save space, see Van Dik et al.
(2002) for more details about these tests.
Fredj Jawadi [a], Mohamed El Hedi Arouri, [b] Duc Khuong Nguyen [c]
[a] Amiens School of Management, EconomiX, 18, place Saint Michel,
Amiens, 80000, France fredj.jawadi@supco-amiens.fr
[b] EDHEC Business School, France arourix@yahoo.fr
[c] ISC Paris School of Management, 22 Boulevard du Fort de Vaux,
75017 Paris, France dnguyen@groupeisc.com
Table 1: Correlation matrix over the sub-period 1970-1999
Europe Germany Austria Belgium Spain
Europe 1.00 0.84 (*) 0.61 0.70 0.74
Germany 0.84 (*) 1.00 0.65 0.67 0.55
Austria 0.61 0.65 1.00 0.38 0.41
Belgium 0.70 0.67 0.38 1.00 0.50
Spain 0.74 0.55 0.41 0.50 1.00
Finland 0.54 0.44 0.33 0.27 0.49
France 0.82 (*) 0.76 0.48 0.68 0.58
Ireland 0.69 0.51 0.44 0.52 0.57
Italy 0.59 0.52 0.39 0.42 0.55
The Netherlands 0.87 (*) 0.75 0.56 0.68 0.58
Portugal 0.56 0.41 0.44 0.41 0.59
Finland France Ireland Italy The Neths
Europe 0.54 0.82 (*) 0.69 0.58 0.87 (*)
Germany 0.44 0.76 0.51 0.52 0.74
Austria 0.33 0.48 0.44 0.39 0.56
Belgium 0.27 0.69 0.52 0.42 0.68
Spain 0.49 0.58 0.57 0.55 0.58
Finland 1.00 0.34 0.43 0.43 0.43
France 0.34 1.00 0.45 0.47 0.69
Ireland 0.43 0.45 1.00 0.37 0.62
Italy 0.43 0.46 0.37 1.00 0.46
The Netherlands 0.43 0.69 0.62 0.46 1.00
Portugal 0.31 0.41 0.49 0.36 0.53
Portugal
Europe 0.56
Germany 0.41
Austria 0.44
Belgium 0.41
Spain 0.59
Finland 0.31
France 0.41
Ireland 0.49
Italy 0.36
The Netherlands 0.53
Portugal 1.00
Table 2: Correlation matrix over the sub-period 2000-2007
Europe Germany Austria Belgium Spain
Europe 1.00 0.94 (*) 0.60 0.82 (*) 0.87 (*)
Germany 0.94 (*) 1.00 0.54 0.77 0.84 (*)
Austria 0.60 0.54 1.00 0.71 0.54
Belgium 0.82 (*) 0.77 0.71 1.00 0.68
Spain 0.86 (*) 0.84 (*) 0.54 0.68 1.00
Finland 0.63 0.54 0.12 0.30 0.46
France 0.97 (*) 0.93 (*) 0.56 0.78 0.84 (*)
Ireland 0.71 0.69 0.52 0.66 0.67
Italy 0.83 (*) 0.82 (*) 0.53 0.69 0.76
The Netherlands 0.93 (*) 0.90 (*) 0.55 0.80 (*) 0.78
Portugal 0.74 0.69 0.49 0.67 0.75
Finland France Ireland Italy The Neths
Europe 0.63 0.97 (*) 0.70 0.85 (*) 0.92 (*)
Germany 0.53 0.93 (*) 0.69 0.82 (*) 0.90 (*)
Austria 0.11 0.56 0.52 0.53 0.55
Belgium 0.30 0.78 0.66 0.69 0.80 (*)
Spain 0.47 0.84 (*) 0.67 0.76 0.78
Finland 1.00 0.63 0.35 0.51 0.53
France 0.63 1.00 0.65 0.86 (*) 0.92 (*)
Ireland 0.35 0.65 1.00 0.53 0.67
Italy 0.51 0.86 (*) 0.54 1.00 0.81 (*)
The Netherlands 0.53 0.92 (*) 0.67 0.81 (*) 1.00
Portugal 0.44 0.73 0.54 0.71 0.68
Portugal
Europe 0.73
Germany 0.69
Austria 0.49
Belgium 0.67
Spain 0.75
Finland 0.44
France 0.73
Ireland 0.54
Italy 0.71
The Netherlands 0.68
Portugal 1.00
(*) indicates the most significant and strongest
correlation between stock prices.
Table 3
Nonlinear cointegration tests (p-values)
Ger. Aus. Belg. Spain Finland France
Panel A: First sub-period: January 1970--December 1999
p 2 1 3 2 2 3
d = 1 0.12 0.13 0.10 (**) 0.34 0.12 0.04
d = 2 0.03 0.20 0.12 0.23 0.34 0.12
d = 3 0.01 (*) 0.12 0.33 0.12 0.64 0.03 (*)
d = 4 0.04 0.52 0.55 0.56 0.17 0.02
d = 5 0.23 0.34 0.21 0.83 0.39 0.34
Panel B: Second sub-period: January 2000--December 2007
d = 1 0.0 (*) 0.12 0.05 0.12 0.13 0.06
d = 2 0.02 0.15 0.01 (*) 0.07 0.23 0.00
d = 3 0.04 0.16 0.02 0.16 0.14 0.04
d = 4 0.01 0.25 0.14 0.04 (*) 0.32 0.08
d = 5 0.03 0.11 0.23 0.28 0.68 0.07
Ireland Italy The Portugal
Neths.
Panel A: First sub-period: January 1970--December 1999
p 2 1 3 2
d = 1 0.34 0.22 0.09 (*) 0.22
d = 2 0.23 0.32 0.38 0.45
d = 3 0.14 0.11 0.11 0.13
d = 4 0.19 0.23 0.23 0.47
d = 5 0.32 0.45 0.10 0.17
Panel B: Second sub-period: January 2000--December 2007
d = 1 0.23 0.12 0.23 0.13
d = 2 0.13 0.14 0.34 0.23
d = 3 0.46 0.09 0.10 0.43
d = 4 0.12 0.03 (*) 0.05 (*) 0.10 (**)
d = 5 0.36 0.12 0.21 0.11
(*) and (**) indicate statistical significance at the 0.05
and 0.10 levels, respectively.