Financial earthquakes, aftershocks and scaling in emerging stock markets

Abstract

This paper provides evidence for scaling laws in emerging stock markets. Estimated parameters using different definitions of volatility show that the empirical scaling law in every stock market is a power law. This power law holds from 2 to 240 business days (almost 1 year). The scaling parameter in these economies changes after a change in the definition of volatility. This finding indicates that the stock returns may have a multifractal nature. Another scaling property of stock returns is examined by relating the time after a main shock to the number of aftershocks per unit time. The empirical findings show that after a major fall in the stock returns, the stock market volatility above a certain threshold shows a power law decay, described by Omori's law. © 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.