Abstract This study explores the co-movement between equity and bond markets and decomposes it into the equity-bond, equity, and bond co-movements. Moreover, the estimation method captures the heterogeneity between developed and emerging equity markets. It reveals that both equity-bond and equity co-movements are important for the developed equity markets. Although the idiosyncratic component plays a substantial role in the emerging equity and bond markets, the global financial crisis has impacted on the co-movement of the emerging equity markets, while does not have an effect on that of the emerging bond markets. The co-movements depend upon market uncertainty measured by VIX.