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The euro was launched, on 1 January 1999, as a common currency for members of the European Union that complied with the Maastricht Treaty. The Maastricht Treaty calls for the coordination of major macroeconomic policies, such as inflation, budget balance, public debt, and long-term interest rates. Theoretically, the coordination of these policy issues and the launch of a common currency will increase the degree of market integration among member countries. This paper empirically tests the impact of the euro on the degree of market integration by looking at the comovement of the European equity markets and a sample of OECD equity markets. Weekly stock market indices for the period covering seven years before the euro and seven years after the euro was implemented was used. The results show that cross-country divergences in stock markets continued after the euro. There is no evidence of cointegration after the adoption of the euro. Cross-country portfolio diversification continues to be beneficial even among euro countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study contributes to the ongoing debate on the size effect and size-based investment styles by investigating the return and volatility spillovers and time-varying conditional correlations among Saudi large-, mid-, and small-cap indices. To this end, we utilize the weekly returns on the MSCI Saudi large-, mid-, and small-cap indices over a long sample period, spanning several crises. The econometric approach that we use is a VAR-asymmetric BEKK-GARCH model which accounts for structural breaks. On the basis of the VAR-asymmetric BEKK-GARCH model estimation results, we calculate portfolio weights and hedge ratios, and discuss their risk management implications. The empirical results confirm the presence of unilateral return spillovers running from mid- to small-cap stocks, while multilateral volatility spillovers are documented, albeit substantially weakened when accounting for structural breaks. The time-varying conditional correlations display clear spikes around crises, which translate to higher hedge ratios, increasing the cost of hedging during turbulent times. The optimal portfolio weights suggest that investors generally overweight large caps in their portfolios during uncertain times to minimize risk without lowering expected returns. The main takeaway from our results is that passively confining fund managers to a particular size category regardless of the prevailing market conditions may lead to suboptimal performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]