Measuring the impact of financial crisis on international markets: An application of the Financial Stress Index

The scope of paper is to examine whether the recent financial crisis has had any impact on international capital markets and more precisely on the 4 primary international stock markets of England, France, Japan, the United States and Greece. The research is based on the use of the Financial Stress Index (FSI) from July 2005 until December 2008 and August 2009. Research results showed that the recent financial crisis has had a negative impact on all examined markets, with the Tokyo stock exchange being the one mostly affected. It was, also, found increased variability of performances following the start of the financial crisis, a fact that is indicative of the presence of conditional heteroscedasticity. As far as the Greek market is concerned, the recent financial crisis has not affected in general the credit expansion towards enterprises and households; however, it has affected the credit expansion to enterprises and households on a case-to-case basis.