The Connection Between Economic Growth and Stock Markets

This paper examines the connection between economic growth and stock market performance in the case of an emerging economy, namely Romania, by using quarterly financial data, during the period 2000-2013. This topic is widely studied in the financial literature and seeks to provide an answer for the following questions: does economic growth influences the capital market, does capital market influences economic growth, or there is no connection between these variables. I have analyzed the long term relationship between economic growth and stock market for Romania, by applying Johansen cointegration test, Granger causality and Gregory Hansen cointegration test, which allows the presence of the structural breaks in the time series. The empirical results obtained highlighted that portfolio investments have a positive impact on economic growth and the GDP growth engages in turn, a long term positive capital markets return. The main conclusion of this study is that in the case of Romanian economy, is a bi-directional link between the economic growth and the capital market performance.