The Effect of Economic Policy Uncertainty on Stock-commodity Correlations and Its Implications on Optimal Hedging

Date
2019-10
Authors
Badshah, I
Demirer, R
Suleman, T
Supervisor
Item type
Journal Article
Degree name
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Abstract

Motivated by previous studies documenting significant return and volatility effects of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on the stock market, this study examines whether EPU has an effect on the dynamic conditional correlations between stock and commodity returns. Our findings point to a positive and significant effect of EPU on stock-commodity correlations with particularly stronger effects in the case of energy and industrial metals. The EPU effect is stronger during weak economic conditions, while VIX as a proxy of market uncertainty is generally found to be insignificant. Finally, we show that the EPU effect on correlations has investment implications as well, implied by a significant effect on optimal hedge ratios in commodities in order to mitigate stock market risks. Our results underscore the importance of selective hedging strategies in which risk managers base the timing and size of their hedging programs on future price expectations, conditional on the level of policy uncertainty state and prevalent economic conditions.

Description
Keywords
Commodity market; Policy uncertainty; Conditional correlation
Source
Energy Economics (2019), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2019.104553
Rights statement
Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in (see Citation). Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. The definitive version was published in (see Citation). The original publication is available at (see Publisher's Version).