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This study aims to evaluate the resource curse hypothesis in an oil-dependent economy, Saudi Arabia, through examining the impact of oil price volatility on foreign ownership among Saudi listed firms.

The study analyzes a unique data set of firm-level data on foreign ownership for the period 2009–2015. A multivariate regression model was applied to analyze the relationships under study.

The analysis reveals a negative association between oil price volatility and foreign ownership in firms with high leverage and low stock volatility.

Policymakers are encouraged to develop policies to control shocks in the supply and demand of oil and enforce economic diversification. Investors can better understand the dynamics of an oil-based economy stock market based on the investment behavior of foreign investors and their response to oil price shocks.

This study adds to the literature by analyzing the relationship understudy in an oil-rich and oil-dependent emerging economy, where its critical economic parameters are influenced by oil price volatility and it has the largest and the most liquid stock exchange in the MENA region.

This study tests convergence in energy diversification, per-capita income and financial development and explores their interrelationships.

Club convergence tests, Granger tests and panel regressions are employed on 134 countries from 1995 to 2019.

While overall convergence is absent across the entire sample, countries have converged within specific clubs. Low- and lower-middle-income countries show convergence in energy diversification and per-capita income. Positive bidirectional relationships are found between energy diversification and per-capita income, and between financial development and per-capita income. A U-shaped relationship between oil prices and energy diversification is identified.

The findings suggest that achieving a shared equilibrium in energy diversification, economic prosperity and financial development is feasible through technological progress within convergence clubs. Investments in human capital and technology are crucial prerequisites for sustainable development.

This study pioneers testing energy diversification, per-capita income and financial development convergence, investigating the tri-directional relationship between them, and exploring the U-shaped relationship between oil prices and energy diversification.

This paper aims to investigate the immediate effect of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic by investigating volatility transmission and dynamic correlation between stock (conventional and Islamic) markets, bitcoin and major commodities such as gold, oil and silver at different investment horizons before and after 161 trading days of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The MGARCH-DCC and maximum overlap discrete wavelet transform -based cross-correlation were used in the estimation of the volatility spillover and continuous wavelet transform in the estimation of the time-varying volatility and correlation between the assets at different investment horizons.

The authors observed a sudden correlation breakdown following the COVID-19 shock. Oil (Bitcoin) was a major volatility transmitter before (during) COVID-19. Digital gold (Bitcoin), gold and silver became highly correlated during COVID-19. The highest co-movement between the assets was observed at medium and long-term investment horizons.

The study findings have a financial implication for day traders, investors and policymakers in the understanding of volatility transmission and intercorrelation in a bid to actively manage stylized and well-diversified asset portfolios.

This study is unique for its employment in estimating the time-varying conditional volatility of the investable assets and cross-correlations between them at different investment horizons, particularly before and after COVID-19 outbreak.

This paper aims to examine the dynamic conditional correlation (DCC) and hedging ratios between Dow Jones markets and oil, gold and bitcoin. Using daily data, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia–Ukraine war. We employ the DCC-generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) and asymmetric DCC (ADCC)-GARCH models.

DCC-GARCH and ADCC-GARCH models.

The most of DCCs among market pairs are positive during COVID-19 period, implying the existence of volatility spillovers (Contagion-effects). This implies the lack of additional economic gains of diversification. So, COVID-19 represents a systematic risk that resists diversification. However, during the Russia–Ukraine war the DCCs are negative for most pairs that include Oil and Gold, implying investors may benefit from portfolio-diversification. Our hedging analysis carries significant implications for investors seeking higher returns while hedging their Dow Jones portfolios: keeping their portfolios unhedged is better than hedging them. This is because Islamic stocks have the ability to mitigate risks.

Our paper may make a valuable contribution to the existing literature by examining the hedging of financial assets, including both conventional and Islamic assets, during periods of stability and crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia–Ukraine war.

This study examines herding behaviour in commodity markets amid two major global upheavals: the Russo–Ukraine conflict and the COVID-19 pandemic.

By analysing 18 commodity futures worldwide, the study examines herding trends in metals, livestock, energy and grains sectors. The applied methodology combines static and dynamic approaches by incorporating cross-sectional absolute deviations (CSAD) and a time-varying parameter (TVP) regression model extended by Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling to adequately reflect the complexity of herding behaviour in different market scenarios.

Our results show clear differences in herd behaviour during these crises. The Russia–Ukraine war led to relatively subdued herding behaviour in commodities, suggesting a limited impact of geopolitical turmoil on collective market behaviour. In stark contrast, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic significantly amplified herding behaviour, particularly in the energy and livestock sectors.

This discrepancy emphasises the different impact of a health crisis versus a geopolitical conflict on market dynamics. This study makes an important contribution to the existing literature as it is one of the first studies to contrast herding behaviour in commodity markets during these two crises. Our results show that not all crises produce comparable market reactions, which underlines the importance of the crisis context when analysing financial market behaviour.

This paper aims to test for volatility spillovers among Islamic stock markets with the exogenous impact of geopolitical risk (GPR) to check the risk transmission among Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Indonesia and Turkey. Researchers test for both the symmetric and asymmetric risk transmission.

For the symmetric response of volatility, the study uses simple generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic (GARCH) and for the asymmetric response of volatility with the exogenous impact of GPR, the exponential GARCH models have been adopted.

The results suggest spillover effects exist from Turkey to Saudi Arabia, Indonesia to Malaysia and Saudi Arabia and Malaysia to Indonesia. The findings of volatility spillover from GPR to sample countries suggest that only Malaysia and Indonesia experience volatility spillovers from GPR.

The present study is limited to the context of four countries and Islamic equities; the study contributes to the literature on volatility spillover, Islamic finance, GPR and asset pricing.

This study contributes to individual, institutional investors’ policymakers’ knowledge in determining security prices, trading plans, investment hedging and policy regulation.

The extant literature disregards the GPR index to examine the volatility spillover effects among Islamic stock markets, which allow researchers to justify the mechanism of risk transmission due to GPR across the Islamic stock market.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research of its type to look at volatility spillover and GPR transmission in Islamic stock markets.