Dynamics of Stock Prices and Exchange Rates Relationship: Evidence From Five Sub-Saharan African Financial Markets

Abstract

This article examines the dynamic relationship between stock prices and exchange rates for five Sub-Saharan African financial markets: Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Nigeria and South Africa. It uses weekly data, covering the floating exchange rate regime from January 14, 2000, to December 31, 2009, and applies both the Vector Autoregression and the Dynamic Conditional Correlation models. Results from the Vector Autoregression model suggest no evidence of cointegration between stock prices and real exchange rates for all the five countries in the sample. Results from the dynamic conditional correlation show that the correlation coefficients are not constant for the period under study, and the estimates largely show a negative time-varying correlation for all the countries except Ghana that indicates a positive correlation.