Comparing COVID-19 with the GFC: A shockwave analysis of currency markets

I analyze the shockwave effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on currency markets, with a comparison to the global financial crisis (GFC), employing Kapetanios m-break unit root test, investigations of standalone risk measures—downside variance, upside risk, volatility skewness, Gaussian Value at Risk (VaR), historical VaR, modified VaR—and Diebold–Yilmaz volatility spillover analysis. Standalone risk analysis shows that the turmoil in the initial months of COVID-19 was not as severe as that in the GFC. However, examination of co-movements and volatility spillovers illustrates a different scenario. According to the results of the static connectedness measure of Diebold–Yilmaz, the shockwave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the total volatility spillover is about eight times greater than that of the GFC. Among standalone risk measures, the results closest to this finding are obtained from volatility skewness analysis. Additionally, of six foreign exchange rates, the Brazilian real and Turkish lira are the currencies experiencing the greatest increase in received volatility during the GFC and the COVID-19 pandemic, respectively. These findings suggest the severe effect of crises on emerging financial markets.     

Crude oil market and stock markets during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from the US,Japan, and Germany

We analyzed the return and volatility spillover between the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the crude oil market, and the stock market by employing two empirical methods for connectedness: the time-domain approach developed by Diebold and Yilmaz (2012) and the method based on frequency dynamics developed by Barunik and Krehlik (2018). We find that the return spillover mainly occurs in the short term; however, the volatility spillover mainly occurs in the long term. From the moving window analysis results, the impact of COVID-19 created an unprecedented level of risk, such as plummeting oil prices and triggering the US stock market circuit breaker four times, which caused investors to suffer heavy losses in a short period. Furthermore, the impact of COVID-19 on the volatility of the oil and stock markets exceeds that caused by the 2008 global financial crisis, and continues to have an effect. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on financial markets is uncertain in both the short and long terms. Our research provides some urgent and prominent insights to help investors and policymakers avoid the risks in the crude oil and stock markets because of the COVID-19 pandemic and reestablish economic development policy strategies.     

Linkages between DeFi assets and conventional currencies: Evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic

This paper examines the static and dynamic returns connectedness between four renowned DeFi assets, namely, Chainlink, Maker, Basic Attention Token, and Synthetix, and four internationally important conventional currencies, being they Chinese Yuan, Japanese Yen, Euro, and Pound Sterling. We use the time-varying parameter vector autoregressions framework combined with the connectedness approach based on the generalized forecast error variance decomposition. Our static connectedness analysis evidences a low connection of the DeFi markets with the conventional currency markets. The results of our dynamic analysis reveal that the return spillovers are time-varying, with an abrupt increase in connectedness between the DeFi and currency markets in early 2020, during the initial escalation of the pandemic. However, the spillover from the Chinese Yuan to the system does not exhibit any hike due to the COVID-19-triggered meltdown, highlighting a pandemic-caused decoupling of the Chinese financial system from the other centralized and decentralized markets. We observe unprecedentedly high spillovers from the system to the DeFi markets at the beginning of the pandemic. However, we still find that the DeFi markets act predominantly as net innovation transmitters during the first COVID-19 year. Moreover, we detect the existence of a pairwise-like relationship between the net return spillover profiles and report on inversely symmetric profiles for the Maker - Euro, Basic Attention Token - Japanese Yen, and the Chainlink - Pound Sterling pairs. Given the time-varying transmission-reception patterns for all markets, investors and policymakers can make use of our spillover analysis to improve portfolio allocation and regulatory decisions.     

When bitcoin lost its position: Cryptocurrency uncertainty and the dynamic spillover among cryptocurrencies before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

This paper examines the dynamic spillovers among the major cryptocurrencies under different market conditions and accounts for the ongoing COVID-19 health crisis. We also investigate whether cryptocurrency policy (CCPO) uncertainty and cryptocurrency price (CCPR) uncertainty affect the dynamic connectedness. We adopt the Quantile-VAR approach to capture the left and right tails of the distributions corresponding to return spillovers under different market conditions. Generally, cryptocurrencies show heterogeneous responses to the occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that the total spillover index (TCI) varies across quantiles and rises widely during extreme market conditions, with a noticeable impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Bitcoin lost its position as a dominant “hedger” during the health crisis, while Litecoin became the most dominant “hedger” and/or “safe-haven” asset before and during the pandemic period. Moreover, our analysis shows a significant impact of market uncertainties on total and net connectedness among the five cryptocurrencies. We argue that the COVID-19 pandemic crisis plays a vital role on the relationship between CCPO as well as CCPR and the dynamic connectedness across all market conditions.     

A tale of two tails among carbon prices,green and non-green cryptocurrencies

This paper studies the tail dependence among carbon prices, green and non-green cryptocurrencies. Using daily closing prices of carbon, green and non-green cryptocurrencies from 2017 to 2021 and a quantile connectedness framework, we find evidence of asymmetric tail dependence among these markets, with stronger dependence during highly volatile periods. Moreover, carbon prices are largely disconnected from cryptocurrencies during periods of low volatilities, while Bitcoin and Ethereum exhibit time-varying spillovers to other markets. Our results also show that green cryptocurrencies are weakly connected to Bitcoin and Ethereum, and their net connectedness are close to 0, except during the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, we find a significant influence of macroeconomic and financial factors on the tail dependence among carbon, green and non-green cryptocurrency markets. Our results highlight the time-varying diversification benefits across carbon, green and non-green cryptocurrencies and have important implications for investors and policymakers.     

Extreme spillover effect of COVID-19 pandemic-related news and cryptocurrencies on green bond markets: A quantile connectedness analysis

We provide the first empirical study on the role of panic and stress related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including six uncertainties and the four most traded cryptocurrencies, on three green bond market volatilities. Based on daily data covering the period from January 1, 2020 to January 31, 2022, we combine Diebold and Yilmaz's (2012, 2014) time domain spillover approach and Ando et al.'s (2022) quantile regression framework to investigate the time-frequency spillover connectedness among markets and measure the direction and intensity of the net transmission effect under extreme negative and positive event conditions, and normal states. We further provide novel insights into the green finance literature by examining sensitivity to quantile analysis of the net transfer mechanism between green bonds, cryptocurrencies, and pandemic uncertainty. Regarding the network connectedness analysis, the results reveal strong net information spillover transmission among markets under the bearish market. In extremely negative event circumstances, the MSCI Euro green bond acts as the leading net shock receiver in the system, whereas COVID-19 fake news appears as the largest net shock contributor, followed by BTC. According to sensitivity to quantile analysis, the net dynamic shock transfer mechanism is time-varying and quantile-dependent. Overall, our work uncovers crucial implications for investors and policymakers.     

Liquidity and short-run predictability: Evidence from international stock markets

This study investigates the determinants of short-run predictability in international stock markets, where predictability is defined as the accuracy of the best-combined daily forecasts. Contrary to popular belief, illiquid markets, characterized by high transaction costs and large price impact, are not necessarily highly predictable. Instead, markets with larger trading volume are more predictable, especially after the global financial crisis and in emerging markets. Those with larger market capitalization, steeper upward trends, and positively skewed returns are less predictable. Company financial strength has limited influence. During the COVID-19 pandemic the markets have become more predictable, with stronger price trends. Emerging markets are less predictable when relatively over- or undervalued.     

Sovereign bonds and flight to safety: Implications of the COVID-19 crisis for sovereign debt markets in the G-7 and E-7 economies

This study investigates the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for sovereign debt in the G-7 and E-7 economies and explores the notion of sovereign bonds as a safe haven. Using a set of panel regression and dynamic connectedness TVP-VAR approaches, our results reveal that the impact of COVID-19 global case numbers on sovereign bonds has been contingent on the level of the country's financial and economic development. More precisely, our findings suggest that G-7 countries, where economic development is typically higher, have seen a negative effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on sovereign bond yield: sovereign 10-year bond yields declined as the number of COVID-19 global confirmed cases increased in G-7 countries. However, in E-7 countries, where economic growth and development are typically lower, sovereign bond yields responded positively to the initial increase in COVID-19 global confirmed case numbers, but this positive effect is not statistically significant. We also find that the G-7 and E-7 economies have a strong time-varying connectedness in relation to their bond markets and this effect is more pronounced in G-7 economies. Daily Infectious Disease Equity Market Volatility is likely to be the strongest predictor of total connectedness. Concomitantly, we shed new light on the predictive power of the number of COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths, and the Daily Infectious Disease Equity Market Volatility Tracker on the interdependence of these sovereign bond markets. Overall, this paper highlights the heterogeneous effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on sovereign bond yields in G-7 and E-7 countries and the notion that the developed economies, with their developed sovereign bond markets, are still seen as a safe haven during times of crisis.     

Searching for safe-haven assets during the COVID-19 pandemic

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the global financial system and caused great turmoil. Facing unprecedented risks in the markets, people have increasing needs to find a safe haven for their investments. Given that the nature of this crisis is a combination of multiple problems, it is substantially different from all other financial crises known to us. It is therefore urgent to re-evaluate the safe-haven role of some traditional asset types, namely, gold, cryptocurrency, foreign exchange and commodities. This paper introduces a sequential monitoring procedure to detect changes in the left-quantiles of asset returns, and to assess whether a tail change in the equity index can be offset by introducing a safe-haven asset into a simple mean-variance portfolio. The sample studied covers a training period between August–December 2019 and a testing period of December 2019–March 2020. Furthermore, we calculate the cross-quantilogram between pair-wise asset returns and compare their directional predictability on left-quantiles in both normal market conditions and the COVID-19 period. The main results show that the role of safe haven becomes less effective for most of the assets considered in this paper, while gold and soybean commodity futures remain robust as safe-haven assets during this pandemic.     

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia-Ukraine war on multiscale spillovers in green finance markets: Evidence from lower and higher order moments

This study analyzes the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war on the connectedness of lower-order moments (returns and volatility) and higher-order moments (skewness and kurtosis) in the markets of green bonds, clean energy, wind, solar, and sustainability indexes. To compare the spillover effects of these moments, we use the Diebold and Yilmaz and Barunik and Krehlik methods. Our findings show that the total spillover effect of lower-order moments is higher than that of higher-order moments in the time domain. In the frequency domain, the total return and skewness spillover are primarily concentrated in the short term, whereas the total volatility spillover is mainly concentrated in the long term. Furthermore, we observe that the spillover effect of the Russia-Ukraine war on the green finance market is mild, while the COVID-19 pandemic has a significant and unprecedented influence on the spillover of both lower- and higher-order moments in this market. Additionally, we note that before the COVID-19 outbreak, the total kurtosis spillover was irregular, but it became concentrated in the long term after the outbreak. Moreover, the continuation of COVID-19 has had an unprecedented and long-lasting impact on the kurtosis and skewness of the green bond market.     

Revisiting conventional and green finance spillover in post-COVID world: Evidence from robust econometric models

In 2020, ESG funds that invest in companies that score higher on environmental, social, and governance measures witnessed an increase in investment compared to 2019. Understanding the causal relationship and spillover between these two types of indexes may help investors determine if clean energy indexes follow the same trend as conventional indexes or the reverse. Additionally, investors would benefit from understanding this causation in both the pre- and post-Covid-19 eras. We conceive this study to plug this gap and advance the knowledge in this critical area. We study the causality and spillover between NASDAQ clean energy indexes, and their corresponding alternatives namely, NASDAQ Composite Index and NASDAQ Global Select Market Composite using the daily data and from 1 st January 2011 to 29 th June 2021. We apply the Granger-Causality test and the spillover models approach by Diebold and Yilmaz (2012) and Baruník and Křehlík (2018) to determine any medium-run, or long-run causality, and spillover between the indexes under reference, respectively. Our results suggest us to observe that both sustainable and green indexes exhibit bi-directional causality where both sets of indexes impact each other in the long-run. Additionally, after the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the connectivity between the two sets of indices rose significantly. Our findings also suggest that the investors will not lose on risk-adjusted returns if they chose to go green. With the investors' ability to shift towards green investment without losing on financial returns, it shall become even easier for businesses to steer their operations.     

Dynamic spillovers between uncertainties and green bond markets in the US,Europe, and China: Evidence from the quantile VAR framework

This paper investigates the quantile connectedness between uncertainties and green bonds in the US, Europe, and China by using a quantile VAR model-based connectedness approach. The empirical findings suggest that the spillover effect under extreme market conditions is significantly higher than that under normal market conditions. We also show that stock market uncertainty (VIX) and oil market uncertainty (OVX) have a greater impact on green bonds, especially in extreme upward markets. In addition, the US is the dominant transmitter of spillovers in other green bond markets, while China is always the net receiver of spillovers. Further research, meanwhile, demonstrates that the connectedness between green bonds and uncertainties is time-varying and that the spillover effects at extreme upper and lower quantiles are asymmetric and heterogeneous, especially in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. These findings provide investors and policymakers with systematic insights into the risk resistance of different green bond markets.     

Does economic policy uncertainty drive the dynamic spillover among traditional currencies and cryptocurrencies? The role of the COVID-19 pandemic

The paper examines the dynamic spillover among traditional currencies and cryptocurrencies before and during the COVID-19 pandemic and investigates whether economic policy uncertainty (EPU) impacts this spillover. Based on the TVP-VAR approach, we find evidence of spillover effects among currencies, which increased widely during the pandemic. In addition, results suggest that almost all cryptocurrencies remain as “safe-haven” tools against market uncertainty during the COVID-19 period. Moreover, comparative analysis shows that the total connectedness for cryptocurrencies is lower than for traditional currencies during the crisis. Further analysis using quantile regression suggests that EPU exerts an impact on the total and the net spillovers with different degrees across currencies and this impact is affected by the health crisis. Our findings have important policy implications for policymakers, investors, and international traders.     

Small fish in big ponds: Connections of green finance assets to commodity and sectoral stock markets

We analyze return and volatility connectedness of the rising green asset and the well-established US industry stock and commodity markets from September 2010 to July 2021. We find that the time-varying return and volatility connectedness have exhibited serious crisis jumps. Some individual assets of both the green and commodity markets are in connection to the US sectoral stock market returns, and the volatility connections are even more common than the return connections. Furthermore, some financial and economic uncertainty indicators manifest positive impacts from the volatility of some ‘big pond’ markets for e.g. commodities, whereas some others affect the connectedness negatively. Additional analysis of financial and economic uncertainty indicators manifests positive impacts from the volatility of some ‘big pond’ markets, e.g., commodities, while others negatively affect the connectedness.     

Commodity markets dynamics: What do cross-commodities over different nearest-to-maturities tell us?

In this paper we investigate cross-commodity futures markets connectedness over different nearest-to-maturities. We thus implement time and time-frequency estimations for two constructed baskets of commodities, classified based on common delivery months. Using daily data spanning the period 1995–2020, we provide a set of stylized facts on the extent to which commodity markets are integrated or segmented. More specifically, our results show that the total connectedness is broadly insensitive to maturity. However, after 2008 financial crisis, the connectedness among commodity futures prices increases when the maturity increases. Furthermore, the overall connectedness amplifies during crises periods compared to tranquil periods. Moreover, certain pairwise markets are comparatively highly linked such as crude oil and heating oil, wheat and corn, corn and soybean, and soybean and soybean oil. The results also demonstrate that crude oil and heating oil are net transmitters all the time and across maturities, while natural gas, gold, and wheat are net receivers all the time and across maturities. More interestingly, the frequency decomposition reveals that most of periods of high total connectedness are driven mostly by high frequency components, which may indicate that commodity markets process information rapidly, except for the COVID-19 crisis period where total connectedness has been driven by lower frequency components.     

Multilayer information spillover networks between oil shocks and banking sectors: Evidence from oil-rich countries

There is no doubt that oil price shocks significantly affect oil-producing countries' macroeconomic fundamentals and financial stability, mainly in crisis times. The recent oil price shocks, coupled with the COVID-19 pandemic, motivated us to investigate the connectedness and risk transmission among oil shocks and banking sectors in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) economies from June 30, 2006, to September 9, 2021. Thus, we construct multilayer information spillover networks between oil price shocks and GCC banking sectors. The empirical results show that the Bahrain banking sector depicts the highest connectedness and risk transmission with oil price shocks on the extreme risk spillover layer. In addition, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates are highly connected to oil demand shocks. Furthermore, we find a substantial increase in extreme risk spillover and volatility spillover layers during the COVID-19 period. The results of this paper have some important implications for regional portfolio risk management, alleviating systemic risk, and developing hedging and investment strategies.     

Exploring the relationship between cryptocurrencies and hedge funds during COVID-19 crisis

In this paper, we investigated the relationship between cryptocurrency market and hedge funds in two different ways. First, we focus on the dependence between Cryptocurrency hedge funds and conventional hedge funds strategies using VAR and VECM models, while analyzing the impact of COVID-19 on the hedge funds' values. Secondly, we choose between ARDL and ARDL-ECM models to study the effects of cryptocurrency price changes on Crypto- Currency hedge funds' values during COVID-19 crisis. Our empirical findings demonstrate that there is substantial interactions between Crypto-Currency and conventional hedge funds. The COVID-19 pandemic has significant negative impact on the performance of the following hedge funds: Event Driven, Relative Value and Distressed Debt fund strategies, this has reflected in a significant drop in their values during this critical period. However, we demonstrate that COVID-19 pandemic did not affect the relationship between crypto-currency hedge funds and both bitcoin and Ethereum. These findings hold profound implications for hedge funds managers, cryptocurrency market main players and policy makers. Our study is crucial in forecasting the performance of these markets especially during global pandemics.     

Corporate Social Responsibility Amid Social Distancing During the COVID-19 Crisis: BRICS vs. OECD Countries

This paper compares today’s corporate management in developing markets (BRICS countries) vs. developed markets (the OECD countries). The influence of determining a new social corporate management season considering social distancing amid the COVID-19 pandemic on emerging markets' economic growth is ascertained and set apart from corporate management in developing markets. This paper helps clarifying and better understanding the role of corporate social responsibility in the conditions of an economic crisis against the background of the COVID-19 pandemic. This work provides scientific arguments that allow solving critical discussions regarding the advantages (growth of quality of life, an increase of business's competitiveness) and costs (limitation of economic growth, non-commercial use of profit, and increased price for goods and services) of domestic production and consumption. In the long-term, responsible financial practices return all investments and allow countries to better cope with a crisis. The research supplies a new view of corporate social responsibility as a measure of crisis management. It reflects its advantages at a time of social distancing in the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic. The institutionalization of corporate social responsibility in emerging countries is not predetermined by internal factors (approach to doing business or organizational culture), if not by external factors (market status, state regulation, and consumer awareness). These circumstances prove the high complexity of strengthening corporate social responsibility in developing countries. In the conditions of social distancing – due to the COVID-19 pandemic – corporate social responsibility goes to a new level. In both developing and developed countries, one of the most widespread manifestations of corporate social responsibility is the entrepreneurship's transition to the remote form of activities. This envisages the provision of remote employment for workers and the online purchase of goods and services for consumers.     

Asymmetric interdependencies between large capital cryptocurrency and Gold returns during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis

This article explores asymmetric interdependencies between the twelve largest cryptocurrency and Gold returns, over the period January 2015 – June 2020 within a NARDL (nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag) framework. We focus our analysis on the epicentre of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic from March 2020 to June 2020. During this crisis, cryptocurrencies are more correlated and more of them have returns that are cointegrated with Gold returns. Moreover, cryptocurrencies develop a long-term as well as a short-term asymmetric response to Gold returns during the COVID-19 period where most cryptocurrency returns respond more to negative changes and exhibit more persistence with Gold returns. Overall, our most important result confirms that the connectedness between Gold price returns and cryptocurrency returns increase in economic turmoil, such as during the COVID-19 crisis.     

What can we learn about the market reaction to macroeconomic surprise? Evidence from the COVID-19 crisis

We investigate the impact of macroeconomic surprise and uncertainty on G7 financial markets around COVID-19 pandemic using two real-time, real-activity indexes recently constructed by Scotti (2016). We applies the wavelet analysis to detect the response of the stock markets to the macroeconomic surprise and an uncertainty indexes and then we use NARDL model to examine the asymmetric effect of the news surprise and uncertainty on the equity markets. We conduct our empirical analysis with the daily data from January, 2014 to September, 2020. Our findings indicate that G7 stock markets are sensitive to the macroeconomic surprise and uncertainty and the effect is more pronounced at the long term than the short term. Moreover, we show that the COVID-19 crisis supports the relationship between the macroeconomic indexes and the stock prices. The results are useful for investment decision-making for the investors on the G7 stock indices at different investment horizons.