The impacts of global economic policy uncertainty on stock market returns in regime switching environment: Evidence from sectoral perspectives

This study contributes in building emerging literature by investigating the impacts of global economic policy uncertainty on Malaysian sectoral stock performance. This study models sectoral stock returns as time‐varying transition probability Markovian processes and employs two‐stage Markov‐switching model for findings impacts of global economic policy uncertainty on sectoral stock returns in regime switching environment. The empirical results reveal that linear framework unable to detect the effects global economic policy uncertainty, and the Markov‐switching model exhibits significant effects of global economic policy uncertainty on all sectoral stock returns excluding technology sector in Malaysia stock market. The findings also expose that the effects of global economic policy uncertainty vary across regime states, sectors, and nature of effects, where the negative effects of global economic policy uncertainty dominate over positive effects. The global economic policy uncertainty exhibits greater impacts on stock returns in high‐volatility regime. Thus, the findings confirm the existence of asymmetric, nonlinear, nonmonotonic, and state‐dependent relationship between global economic policy uncertainty and sectoral stock returns in Malaysia. Therefore, the overall empirical findings can be applied in asset pricing and investment decision‐making purposes. The findings also suggest that global economic policy uncertainty can be a systemic risk factor and predictor of stock market returns.