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In this paper we investigate the dynamics of European government bond market contagion during the financial crisis and, subsequently, during the European sovereign debt crisis. Following Bae et al. (2003), we use the coexceedance variable joint occurrences of extreme negative and positive returns in different countries on a given day to measure contagion. We also analyze the underlying determinants of the dynamics of contagion using an ordered logistic regression. Our results reveal that interest rates, stock market returns and market volatility help explain contagion in European government bond markets; however, their individual relevance varies from crisis to crisis. We also find that past contagion significantly increases the probability of more episodes of contagion today. Finally, we find statistically significant evidence of contagion from the "old" European Monetary Union (EMU) members to the new members during the sovereign debt crisis and to the non-EMU EU-15 members during both crises. Interestingly, our results show that the new members are those that behave most differently in our analysis.

In this paper we investigate the dynamics of European government bond market integration during the financial crisis and, subsequently, during the European sovereign debt crisis. Based on the approach developed by Bae et al. -2003-, we adopt an intuitive measure of integration: the higher the number of joint extreme price rises or falls -coexceedances-, the higher the degree of integration. We also analyse the underlying determinants of the dynamics of integration using a binomial logistic regression. Our results reveal that the level of integration of European government bond markets with the euro area has changed over time, with notable differences between the financial and the European sovereign debt crises. We find that the Euribor, unexpected monetary policy announcements from the ECB and both regional and international volatility play an important role in determining the level of integration, and that, in general, the relevance of these factors does not change between the financial and the sovereign debt crises.

In this paper we investigate the response of bond markets to euro area and US monetary policy shocks. Specifically, we analyze the effect of unexpected changes in interest rates implemented by the European Central Bank -ECB- and the Federal Open Market Committee -FOMC- not only on the returns, but also on the volatility and the integration of European government bond markets. For all three characteristics our results show that the response to monetary policy surprises varies across groups of countries -EMU EU-15 central, EMU EU-15 peripheral, non-EMU EU-15 and non-EMU new EU-. We also find that the effects of monetary policy announcements on the level of integration are more pronounced than those on returns and volatility. Finally, our results paint a complex picture of the effects of monetary policy news releases on the level of integration. The effect of ECB monetary policy surprises differs across old and new European Union members, while the effect of FOMC monetary policy surprises differs across EMU and non-EMU members.

Bond market integration clearly changes in response to economic and financial conditions, since the level of risk aversion changes and investors require time-varying compensation for accepting a risky payoff from financial assets. In this paper we examine the dynamic behaviour of European Government bond market integration using an asset pricing model based on that of Bekaert and Harvey.

In this study we adopt the CAPM-based model of Bekaert and Harvey (1995) to compare the differences in the relative importance of two sources of systemic risk (world and Eurozone) on Government bond returns, in two groups of countries in EU-15. Results show that euro markets are less vulnerable to the influence of world risk factors, and more vulnerable to EMU risk factors. However, they are only partially integrated. For their part, the markets of the countries that decided to stay out of the Monetary Union present a higher vulnerability to external risk factors.

The main objective of this paper is to study whether the introduction of the euro had an impact on the degree of integration of European Government bond markets. We adopt the CAPM-based model of Bekaert and Harvey (1995) to compare, from the beginning of Monetary Union until June 2008, the differences in the relative importance of two sources of systemic risk (world and Eurozone risk) on Government bond returns, in the two groups of countries (EMU and non-EMU) in EU-15. Our empirical evidence suggests that the impact of the introduction of the euro on the degree of integration of European Government bond markets was important. The markets of the countries that share a monetary policy are less vulnerable to the influence of world risk factors, and more vulnerable to EMU risk factors. However, euro markets are only partially integrated, since they are still segmented and present differences in market liquidity or default risk. For their part, the countries that decided to stay out of the Monetary Union present a higher vulnerability to external risk factors.