DO FISCAL VARIA BLES AFFECT STOCK MARKET RETURNS IN EU COUNTRIES?

This paper investigates the relationship between macroeconomic variables and stock market returns on the EU countries dataset. The link is explored between stock market returns and the set of fiscal and macroeconomic variables, including government debt, government expenditures, inflation rate, broad money supply, money market interest rate, foreign currency reserves and foreign direct investments. We used panel data models on developed and emerging EU markets to explore the difference in impact of macroeconomic variables on stock market returns depending on the level of market development. The empirical evidence showed the existence of relationship between inflation and money market interest rate on the one side and developed EU stock market returns on the other. On the other hand, emerging markets prove to be more vulnerable to fiscal developments. In particular, we found only a fiscal variable to be statistically significant in affecting stock market returns on emerging EU markets.