Around the turn of the year 2005/2006, the Russian freezing of natural gas exports to the Ukraine led to a European gas crisis. Using event study techniques, we first investigate whether the Russian suspension of gas deliveries, the announcement of this suspension as well as its withdrawal had an effect on unsystematic volatility of European energy stocks. Second, we measure event effects on stock returns, taking volatility (GARCH effects) and especially possible firm-specific, event-induced volatility into account. We get – at a first glance – counterintuitive results suggesting that the definite announcement of the crisis and therefore a rise of Western Europe’s energy risk tended to increase market expectations with respect to energy-related firms. In contrast, market uncertainty increased the day when Russia reopened its valves. One reason for these findings could be windfall profits of energy-related companies due to increasing resource and electricity prices. The existence of event-induced volatility at a between-firm level confirms the choice of our flexible abnormal returns methodology.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Ifo Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich in its series Ifo Working Paper Series with number
Ifo Working Paper No. 41.
Find related papers by JEL classification: G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies Q41 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Demand and Supply Q43 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Energy and the Macroeconomy