Studying the Relationship between Stock Prices and Exchange Rates in a Sample of Arab Countries

This study aims to explore the nature of the relationship between stock prices and exchange rates in a sample of Arab countries that are facing political crises, those being: Syria, Tunisia, Egypt, and Bahrain. It applies monthly time series data of the nominal and real effective exchange rates and stock prices indices for the sample countries from January 2003 to July 2013. The study utilises the Johansen cointegration test, the Vector Error Correction Model (VECM), and the Granger causality in order to test the long run and short run dynamics between the two variables of interest. The results reveal that there is no short run or long run relationship between stock prices and exchange rates in Tunisia, this holds regardless of whether the nominal or the real effective exchange rate is used; however, for the rest of the countries, the results differ according to the period of study and the measure of exchange rate that has been used. Overall, the post crisis period produced different results than the pre crisis one, and the real effective exchange rate produced different results than the nominal one. Most of the results, except those related to Tunisia, have important implications for investors and policy makers