Abstract
This study investigated in cross-country and panel form the interactions of bank development, stock market development and global equity index, focusing on the BRICS countries covering the period 1990 to 2018. We found a bidirectional causation between bank development (CPSGDP) and stock market performance as proxied by the depth of the markets (MCAPGDP) in the BRICS countries. Cointegration was also found using the panel cointegration framework and the bounds test for the ARDL estimators. This largely proves that a long-run relationship of both direct and reverse nature exists between bank development and stock market performance. For the bank development and market performance models respectively, all the error-correction terms were found to be negatively significant, indicating that they both share dynamic profile and adjust appreciably to deviations from equilibrium between the short run and the long run. The global equity index showed that stock market development interacts more with the global financial environment than bank development in the BRICS countries. Our findings support the complementarity and coevolution hypothesis in the stock market and bank development nexus.