Research Article
Quantifying Information Flows among Developed and Emerging
Equity Markets
Ebenezer Boateng ,
1
Peterson Owusu Junior ,
1
Anokye M. Adam ,
1
Mac Jr. Abeka ,
1
Thobekile Qabhobho ,
2
and Emmanuel Asafo-Adjei
1
1
Department of Finance, School of Business, University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana
2
Department of Economics, Faculty of Business and Economic Sciences, Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa
Correspondence should be addressed to Emmanuel Asafo-Adjei; eaadjei12998@gmail.com
Received 5 June 2022; Accepted 14 July 2022; Published 22 August 2022
Academic Editor: Yuxing Li
Copyright © 2022 Ebenezer Boateng et al. is is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution
License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is
properly cited.
We rely on daily changes in implied volatility indices for the US stock market (VIX), developed markets excluding the US
(VXEFA), stock markets in Brazil (VXEWZ), Russia (RVI), India (NIFVIX), China (VXFXI), and the overall emerging market
volatility index (VXEEM) to examine the degree of information flows among the markets in the coronavirus pandemic. e study
also employs the complete ensemble empirical mode decomposition with adaptive noise (CEEMDAN) to decompose the data into
intrinsic mode functions (IMFs). Subsequently, we cluster the IMFs based on their level of frequencies into short-, medium-, and
long-term horizons. e analysis draws on the concept of R´ enyi transfer entropy (RTE) to enable an assessment of linear as well as
non-linear and tail-dependence in the markets. e study reports significant information flows from BRIC volatility indices to the
overall emerging market volatility index in the short-and medium-terms and vice versa. We also document a mixture of bi-
directional and uni-directional flow of high risk information and low risk information emanating from emerging equity markets
and from the developed markets. We find that the transmission of high risk information is largely dominated by the developed
markets (VIX and VXEFA). In the midst of high degree of contagion, our findings reveal that investors can find minimal benefits
by shielding against adverse shocks from the developed markets with a combination of stocks from India and other equities in the
emerging markets in the short-term, within 1–15 days. For as low as 1–5 days, the empirical evidence indicates that a portfolio
consisting of stocks from Russia and Brazil also offer immunity to shocks from the VXEFA. Our study makes an important
empirical contribution to the study of market integration and contagion among emerging markets and developed markets in
crisis periods.
1. Introduction
e integration of global economies due to cross-border
trade and investment flows has increased tremendously over
the past three decades. While this phenomenon has had
positive repercussions on global stock market development
and financial stability [1–4], it has also increased consid-
erably the correlations among global equity markets. Cor-
ollary to this, the diversification benefits that were apparent
among markets have diminished significantly [5]. is
phenomenon has also heightened the search for segmented
markets by international investors. In this regard, the degree
of integration of emerging equities with developed markets
has become topical amongst finance scholars in recent times
[6–8].
Although emerging equities’ correlations with developed
equities have increased over the years, some authors still
argue that stocks from emerging markets should be con-
sidered as segmented [9, 10]. In support of the segmentation
of emerging stock markets, Akbari et al. [11] reveal that
while economic integration has been achieved with global
markets, financial integration has been slow. Bekaert and
Harvey [12] are also of the view that emerging market eq-
uities are still not fully integrated with developed markets. To
Hindawi
Mathematical Problems in Engineering
Volume 2022, Article ID 2462077, 19 pages
https://doi.org/10.1155/2022/2462077