Volatility transmission across international markets amid COVID 19 pandemic

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to investigate the volatility transmission across stocks, gold and crude oil markets before and during the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis.

Design/methodology/approach

A multivariate vector autoregression (VAR)-Baba, Engle, Kraft and Kroner generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model (BEKK-GARCH) is used to assess volatility transmission across the examined markets. The sample is divided as follows. The first period ranging from 02/01/2019 to 10/03/2020 defines the pre-COVID-19 crisis. The second period is from 11/03/2020 to 05/10/2020, representing the COVID-19 crisis period. Then, a robustness test is used using exponential GARCH models after including an exogenous variable capturing the growth of COVID-19 confirmed death cases worldwide with the aim to test the accuracy of the VAR-BEKK-GARCH estimated results.

Findings

Results indicate that the interconnectedness among the examined market has been intensified during the COVID-19 crisis, proving the lack of hedging opportunities. It is also found that stocks and Gold markets lead the crude oil market especially during the COVID-19 crisis, which explains the freefall of the crude oil price during the health crisis. Similarly, results show that Gold is most likely to act as a diversifier rather than a hedging tool during the current health crisis.

Originality/value

Although the recent studies in the field focused on analyzing the relationships between different markets during the first quarter of 2020, this study considers a larger data set with the aim to assess the volatility transmission across the examined international markets Amid the COVID-19 crisis, while it shows the most significant impact on various financial markets compared to other diseases.

Citation

Ajmi, H., Arfaoui, N. and Saci, K. (2021), "Volatility transmission across international markets amid COVID 19 pandemic", Studies in Economics and Finance, Vol. 38 No. 5, pp. 926-945. https://doi.org/10.1108/SEF-11-2020-0449