Measuring Factors Affecting Financial Contagion

The thesis aims to develop a framework and a model of the fundamental-based contagion in the international stock market. Rather than studying the contagion effect directly across countries' stock markets as in past studies, this thesis assumes the distribution of stock market return is determined by a hidden process called the domestic fundamental, which is defned as the health of the economy, and study the contagion through the fundamentals. Under the framework proposed by this thesis, the mechanism of the fundamental-based contagion in the international stock market consists of two effects: the transmission of shocks and the shock amplification effects. The proposed model is estimated using Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). Then, results from the empirical study on the international stock market contagion between Japan - Thailand, Hong Kong- Thailand and the Us - Thailand reveals that financial linkage is the only transmision channel of shock to Thailand and that there is a significant evidence of the effect of shock amplication by the Thai fundamental. Thus, as the fnancial linkage gets larger, more external shocks would transmit to Thailand, and if the Thai fundamental is weak, it would suffer from the shocks more greatly. Lastly, this thesis finds that Thailand was affected by the fundamental of the US the most, and the effect of changes in the US fundamental on the Thai fundamental and stock market returns became more pronounced during the 2008 global fnancial crisis.