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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to re‐examine the stock market integration and short‐run dynamic interactions between the Malaysian stock market and the stock markets of its major trading partners (the USA, Japan, Singapore, China and Thailand).Design/methodology/approachWeekly stock indices spanning from January 1992 to May 2008 is analysed using autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bound testing approach and vector autoregression (VAR) framework.FindingsStock markets of Malaysia and its major trading partners are found to be integrated. To some extent, it is found that trade does matter for stock market integration. Additional, geographical proximity and close relationship between the countries further contributes towards a greater integration between them. To move forward to a greater financial integration among these countries, trade liberalisation, including reduction or removal of trade and investment barriers would be necessary.Originality/valueThis paper is among the first attempts to use ARDL and VAR frameworks to examine integration among the stock markets of Malaysia and its major trading partners. The findings of the study would shed some empirical lights for the purpose of policy making.

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This paper examines the implementation of monetary policy during the interest rates targeting in a small-open economy (i.e. Malaysia) by using an open-economy structural VAR (SVAR) study. It tests the effect of foreign shocks upon domestic macroeconomic fluctuations and monetary policy, and examines how effective monetary policy is in influencing macroeconomic variables. The results show that during interest rates targeting, monetary policy plays a significant role in affecting macroeconomics variables. This finding suggests that monetary policy has an important role as a stabilization policy in a small-open economy.

Using Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) and Vector Autoregressive (VAR) frameworks, this study examines the integration between the emerging stock market of Indonesia and its major trading partners (i.e., Japan, the U.S., Singapore, and China). During the period of July 1998 to December 2007, the Indonesian stock market is found to be integrated with its major trading partners. Thus, this implies that there is a limited room available for investors to gain risk-reduction benefits through diversifying their portfolio in those markets. Meanwhile, in the short run, the Indonesian market responds more to shocks in the U.S. and Singapore than in Japan and China. In designing policies pertaining to its stock market, the Indonesian government should take into account any development in the stock markets of its major trading partners, particularly the U.S. and Singaporean markets.