IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/riibaf/v53y2020ics0275531919308037.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How does economic policy uncertainty affect the bitcoin market?

Author

Listed:
  • Wang, Pengfei
  • Li, Xiao
  • Shen, Dehua
  • Zhang, Wei

Abstract

This paper examines how economic policy uncertainty (EPU) impacts the Bitcoin (BTC) markets denominated in local currencies. We take BTC against British Pound (GBP) and the United States dollar (USD) as examples and construct the value-weighted BTC/GBP and BTC/USD composite indices. Our results show that the returns around the highest EPU days are significantly greater than those around the lowest EPU days. Further, the United States (US) EPU increases the volatility and trading volume of BTC after EPU spike days, whereas the United Kingdom (UK) EPU does not show such trends. Moreover, we observe a spillover effect for the US EPU to the UK BTC market. We further construct the dynamic conditional correlation (DCC)-GARCH model to test the dynamic correlation between EPU and BTC. Our results show that the effect of the US EPU on BTC/USD is greater than the effect of the UK EPU on BTC/GBP. Our empirical findings may provide insights for regulators to intervene in speculations in cryptocurrency markets effectively.

Suggested Citation

  • Wang, Pengfei & Li, Xiao & Shen, Dehua & Zhang, Wei, 2020. "How does economic policy uncertainty affect the bitcoin market?," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:riibaf:v:53:y:2020:i:c:s0275531919308037
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ribaf.2020.101234
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0275531919308037
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ribaf.2020.101234?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. Symitsi, Efthymia & Chalvatzis, Konstantinos J., 2019. "The economic value of Bitcoin: A portfolio analysis of currencies, gold, oil and stocks," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 97-110.
    2. Ben S. Bernanke & Kenneth N. Kuttner, 2005. "What Explains the Stock Market's Reaction to Federal Reserve Policy?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(3), pages 1221-1257, June.
    3. Fang, Libing & Bouri, Elie & Gupta, Rangan & Roubaud, David, 2019. "Does global economic uncertainty matter for the volatility and hedging effectiveness of Bitcoin?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 29-36.
    4. Jones, Paul M. & Olson, Eric, 2013. "The time-varying correlation between uncertainty, output, and inflation: Evidence from a DCC-GARCH model," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 118(1), pages 33-37.
    5. Urquhart, Andrew, 2017. "Price clustering in Bitcoin," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 145-148.
    6. Lubos Pástor & Pietro Veronesi, 2012. "Uncertainty about Government Policy and Stock Prices," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(4), pages 1219-1264, August.
    7. Demir, Ender & Gozgor, Giray & Lau, Chi Keung Marco & Vigne, Samuel A., 2018. "Does economic policy uncertainty predict the Bitcoin returns? An empirical investigation," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 145-149.
    8. Dickey, David A & Fuller, Wayne A, 1981. "Likelihood Ratio Statistics for Autoregressive Time Series with a Unit Root," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(4), pages 1057-1072, June.
    9. Pástor, Ľuboš & Veronesi, Pietro, 2013. "Political uncertainty and risk premia," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(3), pages 520-545.
    10. Nguyen, Canh Phuc & Le, Thai-Ha & Su, Thanh Dinh, 2020. "Economic policy uncertainty and credit growth: Evidence from a global sample," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    11. 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.
    12. Belo, Frederico & Gala, Vito D. & Li, Jun, 2013. "Government spending, political cycles, and the cross section of stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(2), pages 305-324.
    13. Mougoué, Mbodja & Aggarwal, Raj, 2011. "Trading volume and exchange rate volatility: Evidence for the sequential arrival of information hypothesis," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(10), pages 2690-2703, October.
    14. Goodell, John W. & McGroarty, Frank & Urquhart, Andrew, 2015. "Political uncertainty and the 2012 US presidential election: A cointegration study of prediction markets, polls and a stand-out expert," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 162-171.
    15. Urquhart, Andrew, 2018. "What causes the attention of Bitcoin?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 40-44.
    16. Bekaert, Geert & Engstrom, Eric & Xing, Yuhang, 2009. "Risk, uncertainty, and asset prices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(1), pages 59-82, January.
    17. Li, Xiao-Ming & Zhang, Bing & Gao, Ruzhao, 2015. "Economic policy uncertainty shocks and stock–bond correlations: Evidence from the US market," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 91-96.
    18. Klößner, Stefan & Sekkel, Rodrigo, 2014. "International spillovers of policy uncertainty," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 124(3), pages 508-512.
    19. 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.
    20. Xiong, Xiong & Bian, Yuxiang & Shen, Dehua, 2018. "The time-varying correlation between policy uncertainty and stock returns: Evidence from China," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 499(C), pages 413-419.
    21. Eross, Andrea & McGroarty, Frank & Urquhart, Andrew & Wolfe, Simon, 2019. "The intraday dynamics of bitcoin," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 71-81.
    22. Alexopoulos, Michelle & Cohen, Jon, 2015. "The power of print: Uncertainty shocks, markets, and the economy," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 8-28.
    23. Antonakakis, Nikolaos & Chatziantoniou, Ioannis & Filis, George, 2013. "Dynamic co-movements of stock market returns, implied volatility and policy uncertainty," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 120(1), pages 87-92.
    24. Aaron Yelowitz & Matthew Wilson, 2015. "Characteristics of Bitcoin users: an analysis of Google search data," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(13), pages 1030-1036, September.
    25. Bali, Turan G. & Zhou, Hao, 2016. "Risk, Uncertainty, and Expected Returns," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 51(3), pages 707-735, June.
    26. Jonathan Brogaard & Andrew Detzel, 2015. "The Asset-Pricing Implications of Government Economic Policy Uncertainty," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(1), pages 3-18, January.
    27. Engle, Robert, 2002. "Dynamic Conditional Correlation: A Simple Class of Multivariate Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity Models," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(3), pages 339-350, July.
    28. Goodell, John W. & McGee, Richard J. & McGroarty, Frank, 2020. "Election uncertainty, economic policy uncertainty and financial market uncertainty: A prediction market analysis," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    29. Corbet, Shaen & Lucey, Brian & Urquhart, Andrew & Yarovaya, Larisa, 2019. "Cryptocurrencies as a financial asset: A systematic analysis," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 182-199.
    30. Chkili, Walid, 2016. "Dynamic correlations and hedging effectiveness between gold and stock markets: Evidence for BRICS countries," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 22-34.
    31. 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.
    32. Shen, Dehua & Urquhart, Andrew & Wang, Pengfei, 2019. "Does twitter predict Bitcoin?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 118-122.
    33. 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.
    34. Goodell, John W. & Vähämaa, Sami, 2013. "US presidential elections and implied volatility: The role of political uncertainty," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 1108-1117.
    35. Choi, Sangyup, 2017. "Variability in the effects of uncertainty shocks: New stylized facts from OECD countries," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 127-144.
    36. Urquhart, Andrew, 2016. "The inefficiency of Bitcoin," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 148(C), pages 80-82.
    37. Bariviera, Aurelio F., 2017. "The inefficiency of Bitcoin revisited: A dynamic approach," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 1-4.
    38. Fiszeder, Piotr & Fałdziński, Marcin & Molnár, Peter, 2019. "Range-based DCC models for covariance and value-at-risk forecasting," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 58-76.
    39. Zargar, Faisal Nazir & Kumar, Dilip, 2019. "Informational inefficiency of Bitcoin: A study based on high-frequency data," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 344-353.
    40. Luo, Yan & Zhang, Chenyang, 2020. "Economic policy uncertainty and stock price crash risk," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    41. Urquhart, Andrew & Zhang, Hanxiong, 2019. "Is Bitcoin a hedge or safe haven for currencies? An intraday analysis," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 49-57.
    42. Li, Tao & Ma, Feng & Zhang, Xuehua & Zhang, Yaojie, 2020. "Economic policy uncertainty and the Chinese stock market volatility: Novel evidence," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 24-33.
    43. Wang, Pengfei & Zhang, Wei & Li, Xiao & Shen, Dehua, 2019. "Is cryptocurrency a hedge or a safe haven for international indices? A comprehensive and dynamic perspective," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 1-18.
    44. Chen, Gong-meng & Firth, Michael & Rui, Oliver M, 2001. "The Dynamic Relation between Stock Returns, Trading Volume, and Volatility," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 36(3), pages 153-173, August.
    45. Wang, Gang-Jin & Xie, Chi & Wen, Danyan & Zhao, Longfeng, 2019. "When Bitcoin meets economic policy uncertainty (EPU): Measuring risk spillover effect from EPU to Bitcoin," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 31(C).
    46. Ma, Donglian & Tanizaki, Hisashi, 2019. "The day-of-the-week effect on Bitcoin return and volatility," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 127-136.
    47. Gallant, A Ronald & Rossi, Peter E & Tauchen, George, 1992. "Stock Prices and Volume," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 5(2), pages 199-242.
    48. Maria Boutchkova & Hitesh Doshi & Art Durnev & Alexander Molchanov, 2012. "Precarious Politics and Return Volatility," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(4), pages 1111-1154.
    49. Phillip, Andrew & Chan, Jennifer S.K. & Peiris, Shelton, 2018. "A new look at Cryptocurrencies," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 6-9.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Aurelio F. Bariviera & Ignasi Merediz‐Solà, 2021. "Where Do We Stand In Cryptocurrencies Economic Research? A Survey Based On Hybrid Analysis," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(2), pages 377-407, April.
    2. 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.
    3. Karanasos, M. & Yfanti, S., 2021. "On the Economic fundamentals behind the Dynamic Equicorrelations among Asset classes: Global evidence from Equities, Real estate, and Commodities," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    4. 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.
    5. Flori, Andrea, 2019. "News and subjective beliefs: A Bayesian approach to Bitcoin investments," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 336-356.
    6. Conlon, Thomas & Corbet, Shaen & McGee, Richard J., 2020. "Are cryptocurrencies a safe haven for equity markets? An international perspective from the COVID-19 pandemic," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    7. Mokni, Khaled & Youssef, Manel & Ajmi, Ahdi Noomen, 2022. "COVID-19 pandemic and economic policy uncertainty: The first test on the hedging and safe haven properties of cryptocurrencies," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    8. Andrea Flori, 2019. "Cryptocurrencies In Finance: Review And Applications," International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance (IJTAF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 22(05), pages 1-22, August.
    9. Smales, L.A., 2022. "Investor attention in cryptocurrency markets," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    10. Parthajit Kayal & Purnima Rohilla, 2021. "Bitcoin in the economics and finance literature: a survey," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 1(7), pages 1-21, July.
    11. Manahov, Viktor & Urquhart, Andrew, 2021. "The efficiency of Bitcoin: A strongly typed genetic programming approach to smart electronic Bitcoin markets," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    12. Ranajit Kumar Bairagi, 2022. "Dynamic Impacts of Economic Policy Uncertainty on Australian Stock Market: An Intercontinental Evidence," Journal of Emerging Market Finance, Institute for Financial Management and Research, vol. 21(1), pages 64-91, March.
    13. Belcaid, Karim & El Ghini, Ahmed, 2019. "U.S., European, Chinese economic policy uncertainty and Moroccan stock market volatility," The Journal of Economic Asymmetries, Elsevier, vol. 20(C).
    14. Mokni, Khaled, 2021. "When, where, and how economic policy uncertainty predicts Bitcoin returns and volatility? A quantiles-based analysis," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 65-73.
    15. Wu, Wanshan & Tiwari, Aviral Kumar & Gozgor, Giray & Leping, Huang, 2021. "Does economic policy uncertainty affect cryptocurrency markets? Evidence from Twitter-based uncertainty measures," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C).
    16. Li, Xiao-Ming & Peng, Lu, 2017. "US economic policy uncertainty and co-movements between Chinese and US stock markets," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 27-39.
    17. M. Karanasos & S. Yfanti & J. Hunter, 2022. "Emerging stock market volatility and economic fundamentals: the importance of US uncertainty spillovers, financial and health crises," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 313(2), pages 1077-1116, June.
    18. Bedi, Prateek & Nashier, Tripti, 2020. "On the investment credentials of Bitcoin: A cross-currency perspective," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    19. 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.
    20. 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).

    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:riibaf:v:53:y:2020:i:c:s0275531919308037. 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/ribaf .

    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.