Co-movements of GCC emerging stock markets: New evidence from wavelet coherence analysis

This paper examines the short term and long term dependencies between stock market returns for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates) during the period 2005–2010. Our empirical investigation is based on the wavelet squared coherence which allows us to assess the co-movement in both time-frequency spaces. Our results reveal frequent changes in the pattern of the co-movements especially after 2007 for all the selected GCC markets at relatively higher frequencies. We further note an increasing strength of dependence among the GCC stock markets during the last financial crisis signifying enhanced portfolio benefits for investors in the short term relative to the long term. On the financial side, we uncover that the strength of co-movement between GCC markets may impact the multi-country portfolio's value at risk (VaR) levels. These findings provide potential implications for portfolio managers operating in the GCC region who are invited to consider co-movement through both frequencies and time when designing their portfolios.     

Time–frequency relationship between US output with commodity and asset prices

Commodity and asset prices have a well-documented effect on economic growth as manifested through various channels. At the same time, the business cycle influences the commodity and asset prices. Whereas empirical evidence on the effect of commodity and asset prices on the long-run economic growth is ambiguous, most of the previous researches highlight a positive correlation in the short run. The aim of this article is to disentangle the short- and long-run co-movements between US historical business cycles and commodity and asset prices over the period 1859–2013. For this purpose, we use a time–frequency approach and we test the historical influence of oil, gold, housing and stock prices over the output growth. In contrast to other studies, we control for the effect of other prices and monetary conditions, using the wavelet partial coherency. In line with the previous works, we discover that co-movements between economic growth and commodity and assets prices manifest especially in the short run. We also find that stock returns and housing prices have a more powerful effect on the US economic growth rate than the oil and gold prices. The long-run co-movements are documented especially around the World War II. Finally, when controlling for the influence of the interest rate, inflation and other commodity and asset prices, co-movements become weaker in the short run. In general, the oil and housing prices lead the GDP growth, the US output leads the gold prices, while there is no clear causality direction between business cycle and stock prices.     

Return and volatility transmission between world oil prices and stock markets of the GCC countries

This paper investigates the return links and volatility transmission between oil and stock markets in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries over the period 2005-2010. We employ a recent generalized VAR-GARCH approach which allows for transmissions in return and volatility. In addition, we analyze the optimal weights and hedge ratios for oil-stock portfolio holdings. On the whole, our results point to the existence of substantial return and volatility spillovers between world oil prices and GCC stock markets, and appear to be crucial for international portfolio management in the presence of oil price risk.     

Impact of macroeconomic factors and country risk ratings on GCC stock markets: evidence from a dynamic panel threshold model with regime switching

This study examines the non-linear relationship between stock markets in GCC countries and their country risk ratings as well as with major macroeconomic factors. Based on a dynamic panel threshold model with two and four regimes, the results provide evidence of short-term asymmetry between first-lagged GCC stock returns and the performance of GCC stock markets. In addition, only the financial risk (FR) rating has a significant positive effect on the performance of GCC stock markets according to the prevailing regimes for the GCC lagged returns and the Brent oil market. Among the macroeconomic factors, improvements in the global stock markets, the MSCI Global Islamic Index, and the oil price increased the performance of GCC stock markets, whereas increases in the gold price, the 3-month U.S. Treasury bill rate, and the U.S. Treasury bond rate reduced the performance of the GCC stock markets. These results have important implications for investors, policymakers, and portfolio managers.     

Revisiting the shock and volatility transmissions among GCC stock and oil markets: A further investigation

The paper explores the empirical evidence of the volatility interactions among the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) stock markets and world oil price over the weekly period spanning from June 24, 2005 to March 25, 2011. The study is conducted based on the BEKK-GARCH process developed by Kroner and Ng (1998) and outlining the asymmetry in the conditional variances of the stock and oil markets. The findings show evidence of shock and volatility linkages among GCC stock and oil markets, and reveal that the spillover effects are more apparent for volatility patterns. They also indicate that the stock and oil markets exhibit asymmetry in the conditional variances. From the perspective of portfolio strategies, the results display certain sensitivity to the GCC stock prices, allowing thus better understanding of the relationship between each stock market and oil price. Our findings are crucial for practitioners, policy makers and investors who seek to make earnings by diversifying their portfolios.     

Stock markets in GCC countries and global factors: A further investigation

This paper investigates the long-run links between stock markets of the Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC) and three global factors, including oil price, MSCI (Morgan Stanley Capital International) world index and US interest rate. Unlike previous empirical works, we employ econometric techniques that account for simultaneously the effects of heterogeneity, cross-country dependence and unknown regime-shifts in order to examine the sensitivity of GCC stock markets to movements of global factors. Our findings are of great interest since they show strong evidence of nonlinear long-run relationship between the variables of interest when there is dependence between countries, and indicate that the global factors have predictability effect on most GCC stock markets. We also stress the importance of including regime-shifts in the analysis that leads to more reliable conclusions than those obtained in the literature by neglecting structural breaks.     

China's liberalizing stock market,crude oil,and safe-haven assets: A linkage study based on a novel multivariate wavelet-vine copula approach

China is the world's largest oil importer, and therefore the correlations between stock indices and highly volatile oil prices deserve close examination when investing in China's gradually liberalizing stock market. Another concern for international investors is whether safe-haven assets can reduce portfolio risks for investment in China. The paper makes two main contributions. First, we develop a novel method of examining a multivariate dependence structure by combining wavelet analysis with the vine copula model. Second, we apply the proposed methodology to study the correlations between China's liberalizing stock market, petroleum, and safe-haven assets at different frequencies. We find that the multidimensional dependence of these assets has been altered as a result of the 2008 global financial crisis. Moreover, the vine structures exhibit dependence patterns that vary over time horizons, indicating that the multidimensional dependence is sensitive to time scales.     

Do oil producing countries offer international diversification benefits? Evidence from GCC countries

This paper provides evidence of the existence of diversification benefits in international stock markets when oil producing countries are included in a global portfolio. Moreover, it examines whether recent oil shocks and financial events have significant impact on the conditional correlations and diversification benefits. Using stock returns from developed, emerging, GCC countries and a global portfolio, the empirical findings show that while developed and emerging stock markets have experienced increased correlations over relatively long periods of time, the correlation in GCC stock markets remained low and constant offering high diversification benefits. Interestingly, the paper also finds that, during 2012–2014, the rising conditional correlation levels have reversed trends in developed and emerging markets alike offering more potential for international diversification. Our results are robust to model selection, data frequency, and innovations distribution.     

Dynamic Relationships among GCC Stock Markets and Nymex Oil Futures

Daily relationships among stock markets of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members, excluding Qatar, form two equilibrium relationships with varying predictive power. The Saudi market leads, followed by Bahrain and United Arab Emirates. Kuwait, which is dominated by momentum traders, and Oman have the weakest links with the other GCC markets. Only the Saudi index can predict—and be predicted by—New York Mercantile Exchange oil futures prices. Therefore these markets are candidates for diversified regional portfolios at the country level. The trading day effect is weak for all GCC markets and oil futures prices but remains consistent with findings for the U.S. stock market. (JEL C22 , F3 , Q49 )     

On the dynamic effects of global commodities on stock market blocks in Africa

This article explores the commodity–equity links in the Africa markets by distinguishing between short- to long-run co-movements driven by market shocks. Using the value-weighted average method, available Africa’s stock markets are aggregated into four market blocks. Global oil and gold returns are used as proxies for commodities. Coherency between pairs of markets is examined with the use of continuous Morlet wavelet transform. Results reveal abstemiously high degree of co-movements between the commodity–equity markets in the short- to medium-term frequencies with nonhomogenous lead–lag nexuses, signifying greater benefits of diversification in the long-term. These findings provide investors with relevant strategies for hedging.     

Bull or bear markets: A wavelet dynamic correlation perspective

In this paper, we contribute to the literature on the international stock market co-movements and contagion, especially during the recent subprime crisis, by researching the interconnections between international stock markets in time-frequency domain.Our innovative approach consists on carrying out a wavelet decomposition of return time series before investigating the correlation dynamics across stock markets during the recent financial crisis. It thus enables us to show how the contagion dynamics between international stock market returns are changing across time scales corresponding to investors with heterogeneous time horizons. Moreover, our results reveal that the contagion dynamics depends on the bull or bear periods of stock markets, on stock markets maturity, and on regional aspects. Therefore, all these finding should be considered from an international portfolio diversification perspective.     

经济波动同步性、需求冲击与供给冲击——来自海湾国家的实证分析

本文运用结构向量自回归模型,将海湾六国产出的同步波动性和遭受冲击的对称性联系起来。研究发现,1977-2006年间海湾六国遭受需求冲击的对称程度要高于供给冲击,对称性的需求冲击对维持六国经济周期的同步性既显著又重要,而供给冲击的对称性对维持六国经济周期的同步性几乎没有作用;另外,本文没有发现供给和需求冲击的对称性对经济周期的同步波动有滞后影响。本文实证研究的结果对于海湾六国未来单一货币的汇率制度选择具有重要的参考意义。     

Asymmetric downside and upside co-movements between stock and REIT markets

This article aims to investigate whether stock and real estate investment trust (REIT) returns have asymmetric downside and upside co-movements. The investigation is carried out by employing a mixture copula with Markov-switching coefficients for weight, upper tail dependence and lower tail dependence. Empirical result demonstrates that an asymptotic independence and a positive relationship, which has greater dependence in the left tail than in the right tail, coexist. The empirical result provides useful information for making portfolio decisions. In the independent state, the inclusion of stock and REIT indices in a portfolio builds a diversified portfolio. However, a portfolio with stock and REIT assets cannot get the benefit of risk reduction in the positive dependence state.     

US economic policy uncertainty and co-movements between Chinese and US stock markets

This paper investigates the impact of innovations in US economic policy uncertainty on the co-movements of China's A/B stock markets with the US stock market. We show that it is the absolute changes in the US economic policy uncertainty index that have a negative impact on the co-movements. The finding is robust to the asymmetric effects of non-policy-uncertainty shocks, to a break in the correlation structure, and to the four Chinese A/B stock markets investigated. Our results provide the first evidence regarding how stock market correlations are driven by policy-related uncertainty shocks in the international context.     

Nonlinear dynamics in CEE stock markets indices

We investigate the existence of nonlinearities in the dynamics of the returns of stock markets indices from CEE economies. We use several types of nonlinear tests. We discuss the implications of the results with respect to the efficient market hypothesis.     

Asymmetric effects of oil price shocks on stock returns: evidence from a two-stage Markov regime-switching approach

The asymmetric effects of oil price shocks on stock returns have attracted the attention of many researchers in the past several decades. Most of these researchers’ studies, however, do not separate out the sources of oil price shocks when examining the asymmetric effects. In this article, we address this limitation using a two-stage Markov regime-switching approach. Our results indicate that oil supply and demand shocks have a null or minimal impact on stock returns in a low-volatility regime and a statistically significant impact in a high-volatility regime. We observe that oil demand shocks affect stock returns significantly more than oil supply shocks. A positive aggregate demand shock significantly increases stock returns, whereas a positive oil-specific demand shock markedly decreases stock returns. These results have important implications for policymakers and investors.     

Crude oil and BRICS stock markets under extreme shocks: New evidence

In this paper, we propose an extreme Granger causality analysis model to uncover the causal links between crude oil and BRICS stock markets. Instead of analyzing the average causal relationship, as is usually done, we first decompose the data into three cumulative components and investigate the causality between different combinations of extreme positive, extreme negative and normal shocks. These types of combinations can describe all facets of the interactions between crude oil and BRICS stock markets, especially under extreme shocks. In contrast to the results obtained by the traditional Granger causality test, our empirical findings demonstrate that the effect of oil price changes on the stock markets is stronger under extreme circumstances than under normal circumstances. Furthermore, large upward or downward oil price changes have an asymmetric impact on extreme upward or downward stock price changes. Finally, robustness checks verify the rationality and validity of the extreme Granger causality analysis.     

Oil prices,growth, and remittance outflows from the Gulf Cooperation Council

How does a decline in oil prices and its impacts on growth affect remittance outflows from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries? This paper carries out an empirical analysis of the relationship between oil prices, oil‐ and non‐oil GDP, and remittances outflows from the GCC. The findings of our paper are three folds. First, we find that non‐oil GDP is a key determinant of remittance outflows and that oil GDP is a significant driver of non‐oil GDP in the GCC only in the long term. Second, we document that historically oil prices and remittances tend to broadly move in the same direction but that remittances have been much less volatile than oil prices. An analysis of the past large oil price declines shows that remittance flows to major remittance recipients in Mashreq, Pakistan, and Yemen fell only modestly following large declines in oil prices and recovered quickly in line with oil prices. Finally, we estimate the elasticity of remittance outflows with respect to non‐oil GDP in the GCC using various techniques. Estimates of short‐term elasticity vary between 0.5 and 0.8, while estimates of long‐term elasticity vary between 0.6 and 1.1. We find that construction and government services are two non‐oil GDP components that are strongly associated with remittance outflows.     

Oil prices and UK industry-level stock returns

In this article, we study whether the behaviour of oil prices can be used as a reliable predictor for the disaggregated industry-level stock market indices. We find strong evidence for the relevance of changes in oil price as a predictor for the returns of UK industry portfolios, while this relevance is heterogeneous across industries. In an out-of-sample framework, we find that both the contemporaneous and lagged oil price changes do predict UK industry stock market returns. The predictive power is more transient for the latter case, and mostly appearing after allowing for time variation in the relative performance. In addition, we find some evidence of asymmetry in the oil–stock price relationships.     

UK business cycle synchronization with Germany and the US: New evidence from time–frequency domain and structure of economic growth

This article uses a time–space approach to check the UK business cycle synchronization with Germany and the US. As a novelty, we consider the co-movements in terms of economic growth rate structure. In line with the existing studies, we discover that the UK business cycle is more synchronized with the US then with Germany, and that the co-movements have intensified lately. We also show that co-movements are reduced in terms of business cycle structure and are time–frequency-dependent. Finally, we point out that the UK business cycle became more synchronized with the US cycle given the contribution of investments and external balance to the real growth rate.