Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractCycles in the behavior of stock markets have been widely documented. There is an increasing body of literature on whether stock markets anticipate business cycles or its turning points. Several recent studies assert that financial integration impacts positively on business cycle comovements of economies.We consider three Western equity markets, represented by their respective stock indices: DJIA (USA), FTSE 100 (UK), and Euro Stoxx 50 (euro area). Connecting these three markets together via vector autoregressive processes in index returns, we construct "propagation values" to measure and trace, on a daily basis, the relative importance of a market as a volatility creator within the network, where volatility is due to a return shock in a market.A cross-wavelet analysis reveals the joint frequency structure of pairs of the propagation value series, in particular whether or not two series tend to move in the same direction at a given frequency. Our main findings are: (i) From 2001 onwards, the daily propagation values of markets have been fluctuating much less than before, and high frequencies have become less pronounced; (ii) the European markets are in phase at business cycle frequency, while the US market is not in phase with either European market; (iii) in 2008, the euro area has taken over the leading role. This approach not only provides new insight into the time-dependent interplay of equity markets, but it can also replicate certain findings of traditional business cycle research, and it has the advantage of using only readily available stock market data.

We study macro-financial linkages and their importance within the Swiss economy from a network perspective. First, we investigate the real-financial connectedness in the Swiss economy, using the KOF economic barometer, obtained from real and financial variables, and, the real activity index (RAI), we distilled from a small set of real variables, as two alternative proxies for the real side. Whereas the KOF-barometer-based analysis shows that both sides transmit sizeable shocks to each other without one dominating the other, the RAI-based analysis shows that in the aggregate, the financial side turns out to be the net shock transmitter to the real sector. In the second part, we focus on the relative importance of financial markets as shock propagators using a network centrality measure. We find that 2008-2009 recession in Switzerland and the Swiss National Bank's (SNB) exchange rate policy changes in 2011 and 2015 have significantly altered the way the shocks are transmitted across the two sides of the economy. During 2009-2011, stock, bond, and foreign exchange (FX) markets, in descending order, played important roles as shock propagators. Following the SNB's 2015 policy decision to discontinue the lower bound for the EUR/CHF exchange rate, FX market has become equally important as the stock market but more important than the bond market as a shock propagator.

We analyze connectedness between the real and financial sectors of the U.S. economy. Using the weekly ADS index of the Philadelphia FED (the widely used business conditions indicator) to represent the real side, we find that during times of financial distress and/or business cycle turning points the direction of connectedness runs from the real sector to financial markets. The ADS index is derived from a model containing a measure of term structure along with real variables, therefore, it might not be the best representative of the real activity to be used in the connectedness analysis. As an alternative, we derive a real activity index (RAI) from a dynamic factor model of the real sector variables only. The behavior of RAI over time is quite similar to that of the ADS index. When we include RAI to represent the real side of the economy in the connectedness analysis, the direction of net connectedness reverses: financial markets generate positive net connectedness to the real side of the economy.

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