In the context of globalization, due to the accelerated process of economic integration of countries and financial markets, the interdependence of the world's leading financial markets is more than obvious. This paper investigates the interdependence of stock exchange indices from leading capital markets in the world: USA, European Union and Asia. Our intention is to determine the direction of causality between the observed capital markets, as well as whether and in what way shocks in one market are transmitted to other markets. Research methodology includes stationarity testing, the existence of cointegration, the application of the Vector Autoregressive Model (VAR) which is complemented by the Granger causality test and the Impulse Response Function (IRF) analysis. The results of the research are as follows. Johansen's cointegration test showed that there is no long-term equilibrium relationship between the observed markets, while Granger's test showed that there is mutual causality between the capital markets of Germany and the United States. As for the Japanese index, previous events in Germany and the United States are statistically significant, but previous events on the Tokyo Stock Exchange cannot explain movements in Germany and the United States. According to the results of the IRF analysis, shocks that may occur in the US market have an almost identical impact on all observed markets. On the other hand, disturbances on the Japanese market are not transmitted to the German and American market, i.e. remain in Japan.

Since the late 90's, the existence and direction of causality between the capital market and foreign exchange market have attracted significant attention of theoretical and empirical researchers. This is because both of these financial variables have an indisputable role in the development of each country's economy. In this paper we use Johansen procedure and Granger causality test to examine the existence and direction of short-run and long-run dynamics between the leading stock market index BELEX15 and RSD/EUR exchange rate in Serbia. Using ADF test we find that both series are integrated of order one, and since the value of Johansen trace statistics confirmed the existence of cointegration, we have proceeded with estimation of the VECM model. According to our VECM model, the BELEX15 index adjusts to the long-run equilibrium relationship at a rate of 11.72% in each period, while the exchange rate adjusts to the long-run equilibrium relationship at a rate of 2.73%. We also find that there is unidirectional causality and that the market index influences the exchange rate movements in the short-run in terms of Granger.