Are equity market daily price indices and returns in the major european markets european markets cointegrated? Tests and evidence.

This paper examines the relationship between the stock market price indices and index returns in three major European equity markets, FTSE100 (U.K), DAX (Germany), and CAC40 (France). Our results, obtained using a vector autoregressive (VAR) model, indicate that while the price indices of the three markets are cointegrated, returns on the indices are not cointegrated. These findings are not in agreement with the earlier studies that reported cointegration in the returns of the three indices. The sample period for the earlier studies ranges from mid-1980s to mid-1990s. Our results, using the sample period from late 1990 to early 2002, clearly indicate that there is no long run equilibrium relationship between the index returns on the three markets, although the three price indices are cointegrated