IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jjrfmx/v13y2020i3p40-d326016.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Safe-Haven Assets, Financial Crises, and Macroeconomic Variables: Evidence from the Last Two Decades (2000–2018)

Author

Listed:
  • Marco Tronzano

    (Department of Economics, School of Social Sciences, University of Genoa, Via Vivaldi 5, 16126 Genoa, Italy)

Abstract

This paper focuses on three “safe haven” assets (gold, oil, and the Swiss Franc) and examines the impact of recent financial crises and some macroeconomic variables on their return co-movements during the last two decades. All financial crises produced significant increases in conditional correlations between these asset returns, thus revealing consistent portfolio shifts from more traditional towards safer financial instruments during turbulent periods. The world equity risk premium stands out as the most relevant macroeconomic variable affecting return co-movements, while economic policy uncertainty indicators also exerted significant effects. Overall, this evidence points out that gold, oil, and the Swiss currency played an important role in global investors’ portfolio allocation choices, and that these assets preserved their essential “safe haven” properties during the period examined.

Suggested Citation

  • Marco Tronzano, 2020. "Safe-Haven Assets, Financial Crises, and Macroeconomic Variables: Evidence from the Last Two Decades (2000–2018)," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 13(3), pages 1-21, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jjrfmx:v:13:y:2020:i:3:p:40-:d:326016
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1911-8074/13/3/40/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1911-8074/13/3/40/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John Y. Campbell & Karine Serfaty‐De Medeiros & Luis M. Viceira, 2010. "Global Currency Hedging," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(1), pages 87-121, February.
    2. Costas Karfakis & Theodore Panagiotidis, 2015. "The effects of global monetary policy and Greek debt crisis on the dynamic conditional correlations of currency markets," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 42(4), pages 795-811, November.
    3. De Bandt, Olivier & Hartmann, Philipp, 2000. "Systemic risk: A survey," Working Paper Series 35, European Central Bank.
    4. Baur, Dirk G. & McDermott, Thomas K., 2010. "Is gold a safe haven? International evidence," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(8), pages 1886-1898, August.
    5. Pesaran, M Hashem & Timmermann, Allan, 1992. "A Simple Nonparametric Test of Predictive Performance," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 10(4), pages 561-565, October.
    6. repec:dau:papers:123456789/14980 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Guidolin, Massimo & Timmermann, Allan, 2007. "Asset allocation under multivariate regime switching," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 31(11), pages 3503-3544, November.
    8. Dirk G. Baur & Brian M. Lucey, 2010. "Is Gold a Hedge or a Safe Haven? An Analysis of Stocks, Bonds and Gold," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 45(2), pages 217-229, May.
    9. Kremer, Manfred & Lo Duca, Marco & Holló, Dániel, 2012. "CISS - a composite indicator of systemic stress in the financial system," Working Paper Series 1426, European Central Bank.
    10. Syllignakis, Manolis N. & Kouretas, Georgios P., 2011. "Dynamic correlation analysis of financial contagion: Evidence from the Central and Eastern European markets," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 717-732, October.
    11. 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.
    12. Creti, Anna & Joëts, Marc & Mignon, Valérie, 2013. "On the links between stock and commodity markets' volatility," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 16-28.
    13. Angelo Ranaldo & Paul Söderlind, 2010. "Safe Haven Currencies," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 14(3), pages 385-407.
    14. Peter Kugler & Beatrice Weder, 2004. "International Portfolio Holdings and Swiss Franc Asset Returns," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 140(III), pages 301-325, September.
    15. Ciner, Cetin & Gurdgiev, Constantin & Lucey, Brian M., 2013. "Hedges and safe havens: An examination of stocks, bonds, gold, oil and exchange rates," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 202-211.
    16. Newey, Whitney & West, Kenneth, 2014. "A simple, positive semi-definite, heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation consistent covariance matrix," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 33(1), pages 125-132.
    17. Jarque, Carlos M. & Bera, Anil K., 1980. "Efficient tests for normality, homoscedasticity and serial independence of regression residuals," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 6(3), pages 255-259.
    18. Niaz Bashiri Behmiri, Matteo Manera, and Marcella Nicolini, 2019. "Understanding Dynamic Conditional Correlations between Oil, Natural Gas and Non-Energy Commodity Futures Markets," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 2).
    19. Philip R. Lane, 2012. "The European Sovereign Debt Crisis," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 26(3), pages 49-68, Summer.
    20. Jain, Anshul & Biswal, P.C., 2016. "Dynamic linkages among oil price, gold price, exchange rate, and stock market in India," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 179-185.
    21. Ding, Liang & Vo, Minh, 2012. "Exchange rates and oil prices: A multivariate stochastic volatility analysis," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 15-37.
    22. Sang Hoon Kang & Ron McIver & Seong-Min Yoon, 2016. "Modeling Time-Varying Correlations in Volatility Between BRICS and Commodity Markets," Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 52(7), pages 1698-1723, July.
    23. Phillips, Peter C.B. & Shi, Shu-Ping, 2018. "Financial Bubble Implosion And Reverse Regression," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 34(4), pages 705-753, August.
    24. Bedoui, Rihab & Braeik, Sana & Goutte, Stéphane & Guesmi, Khaled, 2018. "On the study of conditional dependence structure between oil, gold and USD exchange rates," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 134-146.
    25. Peter Kugler & Beatrice Weder, 2004. "International Portfolio Holdings and Swiss Franc Asset Returns," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 140(III), pages 301-325, September.
    26. Hood, Matthew & Malik, Farooq, 2013. "Is gold the best hedge and a safe haven under changing stock market volatility?," Review of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 47-52.
    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. Adrian Jäggi & Martin Schlegel & Attilio Zanetti, 2019. "Macroeconomic surprises, market environment, and safe-haven currencies," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, Springer;Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, vol. 155(1), pages 1-21, December.
    29. Kang, Sang Hoon & McIver, Ron & Yoon, Seong-Min, 2017. "Dynamic spillover effects among crude oil, precious metal, and agricultural commodity futures markets," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 19-32.
    30. Reboredo, Juan C., 2013. "Is gold a hedge or safe haven against oil price movements?," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 130-137.
    31. Tamakoshi, Go & Hamori, Shigeyuki, 2014. "Co-movements among major European exchange rates: A multivariate time-varying asymmetric approach," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 105-113.
    32. Cai, Yijie & Chou, Ray Yeutien & Li, Dan, 2009. "Explaining international stock correlations with CPI fluctuations and market volatility," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(11), pages 2026-2035, November.
    33. Roberto Casarin & Domenico Sartore & Marco Tronzano, 2018. "A Bayesian Markov-Switching Correlation Model for Contagion Analysis on Exchange Rate Markets," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(1), pages 101-114, January.
    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. Hoque, Mohammad Enamul & Soo-Wah, Low & Tiwari, Aviral Kumar & Akhter, Tahmina, 2023. "Time and frequency domain connectedness and spillover among categorical and regional financial stress, gold and bitcoin market," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 85(PA).
    2. Montshioa, Keitumetse & Muteba Mwamba, John Weirstrass & Bonga-Bonga, Lumengo, 2021. "Asset allocation in extreme market conditions: a comparative analysis between developed and emerging economies," MPRA Paper 106248, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Lei Ming & Yao Shen & Shenggang Yang & Minyi Dong, 2022. "Contagion or flight‐to‐quality? The linkage between oil price and the US dollar based on the local Gaussian approach," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(4), pages 722-750, April.
    4. Bonga-Bonga, Lumengo & Montshioa, Keitumetse, 2024. "Navigating extreme market fluctuations: asset allocation strategies in developed vs. emerging economies," MPRA Paper 119910, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Marco Tronzano, 2021. "Financial Crises, Macroeconomic Variables, and Long-Run Risk: An Econometric Analysis of Stock Returns Correlations (2000 to 2019)," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 14(3), pages 1-25, March.

    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. Marco Tronzano, 2021. "Financial Crises, Macroeconomic Variables, and Long-Run Risk: An Econometric Analysis of Stock Returns Correlations (2000 to 2019)," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 14(3), pages 1-25, March.
    2. Evrim Mandacı, Pınar & Cagli, Efe Çaglar & Taşkın, Dilvin, 2020. "Dynamic connectedness and portfolio strategies: Energy and metal markets," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    3. Kang, Sanghoon & Hernandez, Jose Arreola & Sadorsky, Perry & McIver, Ronald, 2021. "Frequency spillovers, connectedness, and the hedging effectiveness of oil and gold for US sector ETFs," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    4. Riadh Abed & Amna Zardoub, 2019. "On the co-movements among gold and other financial markets: a multivariate time-varying asymmetric approach," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 16(4), pages 701-719, October.
    5. Maghyereh, Aktham I. & Awartani, Basel & Tziogkidis, Panagiotis, 2017. "Volatility spillovers and cross-hedging between gold, oil and equities: Evidence from the Gulf Cooperation Council countries," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 440-453.
    6. Yousaf, Imran & Beljid, Makram & Chaibi, Anis & Ajlouni, Ahmed AL, 2022. "Do volatility spillover and hedging among GCC stock markets and global factors vary from normal to turbulent periods? Evidence from the global financial crisis and Covid-19 pandemic crisis," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    7. Abdelbari El Khamlichi & Thi Hong Van Hoang & Wing‐keung Wong, 2016. "Is Gold Different for Islamic and Conventional Portfolios? A Sectorial Analysis," Post-Print hal-02965765, HAL.
    8. Mighri, Zouheir & Ragoubi, Hanen & Sarwar, Suleman & Wang, Yihan, 2022. "Quantile Granger causality between US stock market indices and precious metal prices," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    9. Liu, Min & Lee, Chien-Chiang, 2022. "Is gold a long-run hedge, diversifier, or safe haven for oil? Empirical evidence based on DCC-MIDAS," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    10. Elgammal, Mohammed M. & Ahmed, Walid M.A. & Alshami, Abdullah, 2021. "Price and volatility spillovers between global equity, gold, and energy markets prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    11. Hoang, Thi-Hong-Van & Zhu, Zhenzhen & El Khamlichi, Abdelbari & Wong, Wing-Keung, 2019. "Does the Shari’ah screening impact the gold-stock nexus? A sectorial analysis," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 617-626.
    12. Dong, Xiyong & Li, Changhong & Yoon, Seong-Min, 2021. "How can investors build a better portfolio in small open economies? Evidence from Asia’s Four Little Dragons," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C).
    13. Ali, Sajid & Bouri, Elie & Czudaj, Robert Lukas & Shahzad, Syed Jawad Hussain, 2020. "Revisiting the valuable roles of commodities for international stock markets," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    14. Naeem, Muhammad Abubakr & Hasan, Mudassar & Arif, Muhammad & Suleman, Muhammad Tahir & Kang, Sang Hoon, 2022. "Oil and gold as a hedge and safe-haven for metals and agricultural commodities with portfolio implications," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C).
    15. Akkoc, Ugur & Civcir, Irfan, 2019. "Dynamic linkages between strategic commodities and stock market in Turkey: Evidence from SVAR-DCC-GARCH model," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 231-239.
    16. Urom, Christian & Anochiwa, Lasbrey & Yuni, Denis & Idume, Gabriel, 2019. "Asymmetric linkages among precious metals, global equity and bond yields: The role of volatility and business cycle factors," The Journal of Economic Asymmetries, Elsevier, vol. 20(C).
    17. Chkili, Walid, 2017. "Is gold a hedge or safe haven for Islamic stock market movements? A Markov switching approach," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 42, pages 152-163.
    18. Dimitriou, Dimitrios & Kenourgios, Dimitris & Simos, Theodore, 2020. "Are there any other safe haven assets? Evidence for “exotic” and alternative assets," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 614-628.
    19. Adnen Ben Nasr & Matteo Bonato & Riza Demirer & Rangan Gupta, 2019. "Investor Sentiment and Crash Risk in Safe Havens," Journal of Economics and Behavioral Studies, AMH International, vol. 10(6), pages 97-108.
    20. Akhtaruzzaman, Md & Boubaker, Sabri & Lucey, Brian M. & Sensoy, Ahmet, 2021. "Is gold a hedge or a safe-haven asset in the COVID–19 crisis?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 102(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:gam:jjrfmx:v:13:y:2020:i:3:p:40-:d:326016. 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: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    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.