Stock-bond co-movements and cross-country linkages

This study analyses the correlation of stock and bond indices for eight developed countries. We compare a country's stock-bond linkages with cross-country linkages and find that the former exhibit a negative trend in contrast to the positive trend observed for cross-country stock market and bond market linkages. We show that the decline of the stock-bond correlation in recent years can be explained with a more frequent portfolio rebalancing of investors due to the globalisation of securities markets and implied lower international diversification benefits across similar asset classes. A test for temporal commonalities of changes in cross-country and stock-bond linkages indicates that flight-to-quality from stocks to bonds and cross-country stock market contagion occurs simultaneously.