“…The co-movements of the world's national equity market indexes have long been a popular research topic in the finance literature (see, e.g., Hilliard, 1979;Joy, Panton, Reilly, & Martin, 1976;Makridakis & Wheelwright, 1974;Maldonado & Saunders, 1981;Philippatos, Christofi, & Christofi, 1983). Low correlation between national stock markets is often presented as evidence in support of the benefit of global portfolio diversification (see, e.g., Lessard, 1976;Levy & Sarnat, 1970;Meric & Meric, 1989;Solnik, 1974;Watson, 1978).…”