IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/intfin/v78y2022ics1042443122000452.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

EPU spillovers and stock return predictability: A cross-country study

Author

Listed:
  • Gong, Yuting
  • He, Zhongzhi
  • Xue, Wenjun

Abstract

Inspired by interconnectedness of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) across countries, this paper applies the high-dimensional factor-copula model to estimate EPU spillovers as expected probability in distress (EPD) and examines its effect on stock returns across 23 global markets. We find that EPD significantly and negatively predicts country-level returns in global markets. The predictability is significant for both countries in developed markets and countries in emerging markets by EPD that primarily originates from developed markets. Moreover, return predictability through the spillover channel is highly significant under various market conditions and dominates that through the domestic channel. The spillover effect remains strongly significant after the financial crisis, reflecting increased interconnectedness of the post-crisis global markets. Our results are robust to various model specifications and alternative measures of EPU spillovers.

Suggested Citation

  • Gong, Yuting & He, Zhongzhi & Xue, Wenjun, 2022. "EPU spillovers and stock return predictability: A cross-country study," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:intfin:v:78:y:2022:i:c:s1042443122000452
    DOI: 10.1016/j.intfin.2022.101556
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1042443122000452
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.intfin.2022.101556?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Francis X. Diebold & Kamil Yilmaz, 2009. "Measuring Financial Asset Return and Volatility Spillovers, with Application to Global Equity Markets," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(534), pages 158-171, January.
    2. Christou, Christina & Cunado, Juncal & Gupta, Rangan & Hassapis, Christis, 2017. "Economic policy uncertainty and stock market returns in PacificRim countries: Evidence based on a Bayesian panel VAR model," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 92-102.
    3. Kido, Yosuke, 2018. "The transmission of US economic policy uncertainty shocks to Asian and global financial markets," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 222-231.
    4. Russell Davidson, 2012. "Statistical inference in the presence of heavy tails," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 15(1), pages 31-53, February.
    5. Han, Bing & Kumar, Alok, 2013. "Speculative Retail Trading and Asset Prices," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 48(2), pages 377-404, April.
    6. Joakim Westerlund & Paresh Narayan, 2015. "Testing for Predictability in Conditionally Heteroskedastic Stock Returns," Journal of Financial Econometrics, Oxford University Press, vol. 13(2), pages 342-375.
    7. Dong Hwan Oh & Andrew J. Patton, 2018. "Time-Varying Systemic Risk: Evidence From a Dynamic Copula Model of CDS Spreads," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(2), pages 181-195, April.
    8. Antonakakis, Nikolaos & Gabauer, David & Gupta, Rangan & Plakandaras, Vasilios, 2018. "Dynamic connectedness of uncertainty across developed economies: A time-varying approach," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 63-75.
    9. Liang, Chin Chia & Troy, Carol & Rouyer, Ellen, 2020. "U.S. uncertainty and Asian stock prices: Evidence from the asymmetric NARDL model," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    10. Bilson, Christopher M. & Brailsford, Timothy J. & Hooper, Vincent C., 2002. "The explanatory power of political risk in emerging markets," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 1-27.
    11. Nicholas Bloom, 2009. "The Impact of Uncertainty Shocks," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(3), pages 623-685, May.
    12. Hu, Zhijun & Kutan, Ali M. & Sun, Ping-Wen, 2018. "Is U.S. economic policy uncertainty priced in China's A-shares market? Evidence from market, industry, and individual stocks," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 207-220.
    13. Bali, Turan G. & Cakici, Nusret & Whitelaw, Robert F., 2011. "Maxing out: Stocks as lotteries and the cross-section of expected returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(2), pages 427-446, February.
    14. Ang, Andrew & Hodrick, Robert J. & Xing, Yuhang & Zhang, Xiaoyan, 2009. "High idiosyncratic volatility and low returns: International and further U.S. evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(1), pages 1-23, January.
    15. Haroon Mumtaz & Konstantinos Theodoridis, 2015. "The International Transmission Of Volatility Shocks: An Empirical Analysis," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 13(3), pages 512-533, June.
    16. Colombo, Valentina, 2013. "Economic policy uncertainty in the US: Does it matter for the Euro area?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 121(1), pages 39-42.
    17. Raju Huidrom & M. Ayhan Kose & Hideaki Matsuoka & Franziska L. Ohnsorge, 2020. "How important are spillovers from major emerging markets?," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(1), pages 47-63, March.
    18. Xiao-lin Li & Mehmet Balcilar & Rangan Gupta & Tsangyao Chang, 2016. "The Causal Relationship Between Economic Policy Uncertainty and Stock Returns in China and India: Evidence from a Bootstrap Rolling Window Approach," Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 52(3), pages 674-689, March.
    19. Nicholas Barberis & Ming Huang, 2008. "Stocks as Lotteries: The Implications of Probability Weighting for Security Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(5), pages 2066-2100, December.
    20. Fama, Eugene F. & Schwert, G. William, 1977. "Asset returns and inflation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 115-146, November.
    21. Bekaert, Geert & Harvey, Campbell R., 1997. "Emerging equity market volatility," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 29-77, January.
    22. Ko, Jun-Hyung & Lee, Chang-Min, 2015. "International economic policy uncertainty and stock prices: Wavelet approach," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 118-122.
    23. Kang, Wensheng & Ratti, Ronald A., 2013. "Oil shocks, policy uncertainty and stock market return," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 305-318.
    24. Phan, Dinh Hoang Bach & Sharma, Susan Sunila & Tran, Vuong Thao, 2018. "Can economic policy uncertainty predict stock returns? Global evidence," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 134-150.
    25. Rong Li & Sufang Li & Di Yuan & Keming Yu, 2020. "Does economic policy uncertainty in the U.S. influence stock markets in China and India? Time-frequency evidence," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 52(39), pages 4300-4316, August.
    26. Klößner, Stefan & Sekkel, Rodrigo, 2014. "International spillovers of policy uncertainty," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 124(3), pages 508-512.
    27. Scott R. Baker & Nicholas Bloom & Steven J. Davis, 2016. "Measuring Economic Policy Uncertainty," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(4), pages 1593-1636.
    28. Chabi-Yo, Fousseni & Yang, Jun, 2009. "Default Risk, Idiosyncratic Coskewness and Equity Returns," Working Paper Series 2009-18, Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics.
    29. Arouri, Mohamed & Estay, Christophe & Rault, Christophe & Roubaud, David, 2016. "Economic policy uncertainty and stock markets: Long-run evidence from the US," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 18(C), pages 136-141.
    30. Guo, Peng & Zhu, Huiming & You, Wanhai, 2018. "Asymmetric dependence between economic policy uncertainty and stock market returns in G7 and BRIC: A quantile regression approach," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 251-258.
    31. Bali, Turan G. & Brown, Stephen J. & Tang, Yi, 2017. "Is economic uncertainty priced in the cross-section of stock returns?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(3), pages 471-489.
    32. Chen, Nai-Fu & Roll, Richard & Ross, Stephen A, 1986. "Economic Forces and the Stock Market," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(3), pages 383-403, July.
    33. Lesmond, David A & Ogden, Joseph P & Trzcinka, Charles A, 1999. "A New Estimate of Transaction Costs," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 12(5), pages 1113-1141.
    34. Granger, Clive W.J. & Terasvirta, Timo & Patton, Andrew J., 2006. "Common factors in conditional distributions for bivariate time series," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 132(1), pages 43-57, May.
    35. Imen Dakhlaoui & Chaker Aloui, 2016. "The Interactive Relationship Between the US Economic Policy Uncertainty and BRIC Stock Markets," International Economics, CEPII research center, issue 146, pages 141-157.
    36. Jonathan Brogaard & Andrew Detzel, 2015. "The Asset-Pricing Implications of Government Economic Policy Uncertainty," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(1), pages 3-18, January.
    37. Andrew J. Patton, 2006. "Modelling Asymmetric Exchange Rate Dependence," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 47(2), pages 527-556, May.
    38. Diebold, Francis X. & Yilmaz, Kamil, 2012. "Better to give than to receive: Predictive directional measurement of volatility spillovers," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 57-66.
    39. Merton, Robert C, 1973. "An Intertemporal Capital Asset Pricing Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 41(5), pages 867-887, September.
    40. Balli, Faruk & Uddin, Gazi Salah & Mudassar, Hasan & Yoon, Seong-Min, 2017. "Cross-country determinants of economic policy uncertainty spillovers," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 179-183.
    41. Hansen, Bruce E, 1994. "Autoregressive Conditional Density Estimation," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 35(3), pages 705-730, August.
    42. Wei Huang & Qianqiu Liu & S. Ghon Rhee & Liang Zhang, 2010. "Return Reversals, Idiosyncratic Risk, and Expected Returns," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(1), pages 147-168, January.
    43. Gupta, Rangan & Sun, Xiaojin, 2020. "Forecasting economic policy uncertainty of BRIC countries using Bayesian VARs," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 186(C).
    44. Christian Brownlees & Robert F. Engle, 2017. "SRISK: A Conditional Capital Shortfall Measure of Systemic Risk," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(1), pages 48-79.
    45. Ahdi N. Ajmi & Rangan Gupta & Patrick T. Kanda, 2013. "Causality between Economic Policy Uncertainty across Countries: Evidence from Linear and Nonlinear Tests," Working Papers 201361, University of Pretoria, Department of Economics.
    46. Pierre-Richard Agénor & Luiz A. Pereira da Silva, 2022. "Financial spillovers, spillbacks, and the scope for international macroprudential policy coordination," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 79-127, February.
    47. Fontaine, Idriss & Razafindravaosolonirina, Justinien & Didier, Laurent, 2018. "Chinese policy uncertainty shocks and the world macroeconomy: Evidence from STVAR," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 1-19.
    48. Chen, Shiu-Sheng, 2009. "Predicting the bear stock market: Macroeconomic variables as leading indicators," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 211-223, February.
    49. Zhanhui Chen & Ralitsa Petkova, 2012. "Does Idiosyncratic Volatility Proxy for Risk Exposure?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(9), pages 2745-2787.
    50. Bali, Turan G. & Cakici, Nusret, 2010. "World market risk, country-specific risk and expected returns in international stock markets," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(6), pages 1152-1165, June.
    51. Gabauer, David & Gupta, Rangan, 2018. "On the transmission mechanism of country-specific and international economic uncertainty spillovers: Evidence from a TVP-VAR connectedness decomposition approach," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 63-71.
    52. Tsai, I-Chun, 2017. "The source of global stock market risk: A viewpoint of economic policy uncertainty," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 122-131.
    53. Das, Debojyoti & Kumar, Surya Bhushan, 2018. "International economic policy uncertainty and stock prices revisited: Multiple and Partial wavelet approach," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 100-108.
    54. Can Sever, 2022. "Financial crises and institutional quality," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(1), pages 1510-1525, January.
    55. Cakici, Nusret & Zaremba, Adam, 2021. "Liquidity and the cross-section of international stock returns," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    56. Das, Debojyoti & Kannadhasan, M. & Bhattacharyya, Malay, 2019. "Do the emerging stock markets react to international economic policy uncertainty, geopolitical risk and financial stress alike?," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 1-19.
    57. Randi Næs & Johannes A. Skjeltorp & Bernt Arne Ødegaard, 2011. "Stock Market Liquidity and the Business Cycle," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(1), pages 139-176, February.
    58. Hou, Kewei & Loh, Roger K., 2016. "Have we solved the idiosyncratic volatility puzzle?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(1), pages 167-194.
    59. Fu, Fangjian, 2009. "Idiosyncratic risk and the cross-section of expected stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(1), pages 24-37, January.
    60. Drew Creal & Siem Jan Koopman & André Lucas, 2013. "Generalized Autoregressive Score Models With Applications," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(5), pages 777-795, August.
    61. Nina Biljanovska & Francesco Grigoli & Martina Hengge, 2021. "Fear thy neighbor: Spillovers from economic policy uncertainty," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(2), pages 409-438, May.
    62. Caglayan, Mustafa Onur & Xue, Wenjun & Zhang, Liwen, 2020. "Global investigation on the country-level idiosyncratic volatility and its determinants," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 143-160.
    63. Huseyin Gulen & Mihai Ion, 2016. "Editor's Choice Policy Uncertainty and Corporate Investment," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(3), pages 523-564.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ghosh, Indranil & Alfaro-Cortés, Esteban & Gámez, Matías & García-Rubio, Noelia, 2023. "Prediction and interpretation of daily NFT and DeFi prices dynamics: Inspection through ensemble machine learning & XAI," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    2. Huang, Yisu & Ma, Feng & Bouri, Elie & Huang, Dengshi, 2023. "A comprehensive investigation on the predictive power of economic policy uncertainty from non-U.S. countries for U.S. stock market returns," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. He, Feng & Wang, Ziwei & Yin, Libo, 2020. "Asymmetric volatility spillovers between international economic policy uncertainty and the U.S. stock market," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    2. Tihana Škrinjarić & Zrinka Orlović, 2020. "Economic Policy Uncertainty and Stock Market Spillovers: Case of Selected CEE Markets," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 8(7), pages 1-33, July.
    3. Hong, Yun & Zhang, Rushan & Zhang, Feipeng, 2024. "Time-varying causality impact of economic policy uncertainty on stock market returns: Global evidence from developed and emerging countries," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    4. Shao, Ying-Hui & Yang, Yan-Hong & Zhou, Wei-Xing, 2022. "How does economic policy uncertainty comove with stock markets: New evidence from symmetric thermal optimal path method," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 604(C).
    5. Yuting Gong & Zhongzhi He & Wenjun Xue, 2023. "EPU spillovers and sovereign CDS spreads: A cross‐country study," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(12), pages 1770-1806, December.
    6. He, Zhongzhi & Xue, Wenjun, 2022. "Idiosyncratic volatility puzzle exists at the country level," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    7. Das, Debojyoti & Kannadhasan, M. & Bhattacharyya, Malay, 2019. "Do the emerging stock markets react to international economic policy uncertainty, geopolitical risk and financial stress alike?," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 1-19.
    8. Chen, Xiaoyu & Chiang, Thomas C., 2020. "Empirical investigation of changes in policy uncertainty on stock returns—Evidence from China’s market," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    9. Ngo Thai Hung, 2021. "Directional Spillover Effects Between BRICS Stock Markets and Economic Policy Uncertainty," Asia-Pacific Financial Markets, Springer;Japanese Association of Financial Economics and Engineering, vol. 28(3), pages 429-448, September.
    10. Lee, Kiryoung & Jeon, Yoontae & Nam, Eun-Young, 2021. "Chinese Economic Policy Uncertainty and the Cross-Section of U.S. Asset Returns," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 1063-1077.
    11. Chang, Kuang-Liang, 2021. "Do U.S. and Japanese uncertainty shocks play important roles in affecting transition mechanisms of Japanese stock market?," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C).
    12. Liu, Peipei & Huang, Wei-Qiang, 2024. "Spatial analysis of sovereign risk from the perspective of EPU spillovers," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 89(PA), pages 427-443.
    13. Shabir Mohsin Hashmi & Muhammad Akram Gilal & Wing-Keung Wong, 2021. "Sustainability of Global Economic Policy and Stock Market Returns in Indonesia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(10), pages 1-18, May.
    14. Guglielmo Maria Caporale & Menelaos Karanasos & Stavroula Yfanti, 2019. "Macro-Financial Linkages in the High-Frequency Domain: The Effects of Uncertainty on Realized Volatility," CESifo Working Paper Series 8000, CESifo.
    15. Zhou, Yuqin & Liu, Zhenhua & Wu, Shan, 2022. "The global economic policy uncertainty spillover analysis: In the background of COVID-19 pandemic," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    16. Chuliá, Helena & Gupta, Rangan & Uribe, Jorge M. & Wohar, Mark E., 2017. "Impact of US uncertainties on emerging and mature markets: Evidence from a quantile-vector autoregressive approach," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 178-191.
    17. Pym Manopimoke & Suthawan Prukumpai & Yuthana Sethapramote, 2018. "Dynamic Connectedness in Emerging Asian Equity Markets," International Symposia in Economic Theory and Econometrics, in: Banking and Finance Issues in Emerging Markets, volume 25, pages 51-84, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    18. Cagli, Efe Caglar & Mandaci, Pinar Evrim, 2023. "Time and frequency connectedness of uncertainties in cryptocurrency, stock, currency, energy, and precious metals markets," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    19. Wen, Fenghua & Shui, Aojie & Cheng, Yuxiang & Gong, Xu, 2022. "Monetary policy uncertainty and stock returns in G7 and BRICS countries: A quantile-on-quantile approach," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 457-482.
    20. Simran, & Sharma, Anil Kumar, 2024. "Asymmetric nexus between economic policy uncertainty and the Indian stock market: Evidence using NARDL approach," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 91-101.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:intfin:v:78:y:2022:i:c:s1042443122000452. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/intfin .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.