Contagion effect in the current debt crisis: Effect of a membership in the eurozone

i Abstract This thesis deals with the topic of linkages on the financial markets. It summa- rize the main methodologies that are used for analyzing the interdependencies of financial time series. The Granger causality is then used to investigate the relation between the bond yields and stock price indices of the Czech republic and Slovakia with those of the Germany, Italy and Spain. The aim of this analysis is to find out whether the membership in the Eurozone has some sig- nifficant effect on the financial market linkages. The results of the analysis are such that none of the triplet Germany, Italy and Spain granger cause the financial data of Slovakia while there is strong evidence that they granger cause the Czech republic data. Moreover, stronger relationship was found in the case of the stock price indices. JEL Classification F15, G15 Keywords Financial linkage, Czech republic, Slovaki