Economic policy uncertainty and grain futures price volatility: evidence from China
China Agricultural Economic Review
ISSN: 1756-137X
Article publication date: 15 August 2019
Issue publication date: 18 October 2019
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on China’s grain futures prices. Related literature has discussed several factors contributing to the dramatic boom and bust in China’s grain futures prices, but has overlooked the influence of EPU.
Design/methodology/approach
The study employs a newly developed time-varying parameter vector autoregressive model to study and contrast the impact of different types of uncertainty on China’s grain futures prices. The directional volatility spillover index is used to measure the impact of EPU on China’s grain futures prices and compare the differences among commodities.
Findings
The results show that EPU affects China’s grain futures prices significantly. The 2008 global financial crisis had stronger influence on China’s grain futures prices than other types of uncertainty. Furthermore, EPU has smaller influence on wheat futures price than on maize and soybean. The Chinese Government interventions may be the reason for this difference.
Originality/value
This study addresses the lack of empirical investigation on the influence of EPU on China’s grain futures price volatility.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos 71673103 and 71703049) and by the Humanities and Social Science Project of the Ministry of Education of China (Grant No. 17YJC790173). The authors thank the anonymous referees and journal editors for helpful comments and suggestions, and also thank Wuyang Hu (The Ohio State University), Juan He (Huazhong Agricultural University) and Tao Xiong (Huazhong Agricultural University) for writing supports.
Citation
Xiao, X., Tian, Q., Hou, S. and Li, C. (2019), "Economic policy uncertainty and grain futures price volatility: evidence from China", China Agricultural Economic Review, Vol. 11 No. 4, pp. 642-654. https://doi.org/10.1108/CAER-11-2018-0224
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited