Financial Contagion in Latin America
The series Working Papers on Economics is published by the Office for Economic Studies at the Banco de la República (Central Bank of Colombia). The works published are provisional, and their authors are fully responsible for the opinions expressed in them, as well as for possible mistakes. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Banco de la República or its Board of Directors.
This study uses a Dynamic Conditional Correlation multivariate GARCH approach for testing for contagion among Latin American financial markets to shocks originated in the United States and Europe. Using daily data on stock market returns for the period comprised between July 4th, 2001 and December 30th, 2013, we find some evidence suggesting two episodes of contagion. The first corresponds to the time of the mortgage subprime crisis in the US, while the second corresponds to the period of sovereign bonds' turbulence in Europe.