IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ebl/ecbull/eb-21-01020.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A war in a pandemic- The recent spike in economic uncertainty and the hedging abilities of Bitcoin

Author

Listed:
  • Refk Selmi

    (ESC Pau Business School, Pau, France)

Abstract

The ongoing Russian/Ukrainian war, along with sanctions imposed on Russia, poses a major shock to the world economy, merely two years after the COVID-19 pandemic. Accordingly, the global economic policy uncertainty has surged due to the resulting spiraling energy prices and economic disruptions. This paper uses a quantile-on-quantile approach to compare the ability of Bitcoin to hedge the economic policy uncertainty (EPU) of major global Bitcoin exchange markets (China, Japan, Korea and the United States) for the periods prior to and post-the COVID-19 and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The results reveal that, prior to the pandemic, significant rises in EPU lead to high Bitcoin returns. After the COVID-19 and the recent war in Ukraine, the hedge effectiveness of Bitcoin is weakening due to the tight correlation with stocks in times of rising inflation expectations and the global central banks' hawkish response to it. Moreover, the Bitcoin hedging property is country-specific, and depends to different Bitcoin market conditions and various uncertainty levels. We explain this heterogeneity by differences across countries in terms of the recognition of Bitcoin as a legal tender, the Bitcoin trading volume, the exchange market maturity, and the investors' attitude towards risk.

Suggested Citation

  • Refk Selmi, 2022. "A war in a pandemic- The recent spike in economic uncertainty and the hedging abilities of Bitcoin," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 42(3), pages 1422-1431.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-21-01020
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.accessecon.com/Pubs/EB/2022/Volume42/EB-22-V42-I3-P121.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Selmi, Refk & Mensi, Walid & Hammoudeh, Shawkat & Bouoiyour, Jamal, 2018. "Is Bitcoin a hedge, a safe haven or a diversifier for oil price movements? A comparison with gold," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 787-801.
    2. Sim, Nicholas & Zhou, Hongtao, 2015. "Oil prices, US stock return, and the dependence between their quantiles," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 1-8.
    3. Xiao, Zhijie & Koenker, Roger, 2009. "Conditional Quantile Estimation for Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity Models," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 104(488), pages 1696-1712.
    4. Kamal, Javed Bin & Hassan, M. Kabir, 2022. "Asymmetric connectedness between cryptocurrency environment attention index and green assets," The Journal of Economic Asymmetries, Elsevier, vol. 25(C).
    5. 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.
    6. Jamal Bouoiyour & Refk Selmi & Mark E. Wohar, 2019. "Safe havens in the face of Presidential election uncertainty: A comparison between Bitcoin, oil and precious metals," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(57), pages 6076-6088, December.
    7. Reboredo, Juan C., 2013. "Is gold a hedge or safe haven against oil price movements?," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 130-137.
    8. Aamir Aijaz Syed & Farhan Ahmed & Muhammad Abdul Kamal & Assad Ullah & Jose Pedro Ramos-Requena, 2022. "Is There an Asymmetric Relationship between Economic Policy Uncertainty, Cryptocurrencies, and Global Green Bonds? Evidence from the United States of America," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 10(5), pages 1-15, February.
    9. Dyhrberg, Anne Haubo, 2016. "Hedging capabilities of bitcoin. Is it the virtual gold?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 16(C), pages 139-144.
    10. Chung, Chune Young & Wang, Kainan, 2016. "The impact of individual investor trading on information asymmetry in the Korean stock market," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 472-484.
    11. Cheng, Hui-Pei & Yen, Kuang-Chieh, 2020. "The relationship between the economic policy uncertainty and the cryptocurrency market," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 35(C).
    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. Selmi, Refk & Mensi, Walid & Hammoudeh, Shawkat & Bouoiyour, Jamal, 2018. "Is Bitcoin a hedge, a safe haven or a diversifier for oil price movements? A comparison with gold," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 787-801.
    2. Ahmed, Walid M.A., 2022. "Robust drivers of Bitcoin price movements: An extreme bounds analysis," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    3. Abdollah Ah Mand, 2025. "Cryptocurrency returns and cryptocurrency uncertainty: a time–frequency analysis," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 11(1), pages 1-29, December.
    4. Zhu, Xuehong & Niu, Zibo & Zhang, Hongwei & Huang, Jiaxin & Zuo, Xuguang, 2022. "Can gold and bitcoin hedge against the COVID-19 related news sentiment risk? New evidence from a NARDL approach," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    5. Selmi, Refk & Bouoiyour, Jamal & Wohar, Mark E., 2022. "“Digital Gold” and geopolitics," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).
    6. Long, Shaobo & Pei, Hongxia & Tian, Hao & Lang, Kun, 2021. "Can both Bitcoin and gold serve as safe-haven assets? — A comparative analysis based on the NARDL model," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    7. Papadamou, Stephanos & Kyriazis, Nikolaos A. & Tzeremes, Panayiotis G., 2021. "Non-linear causal linkages of EPU and gold with major cryptocurrencies during bull and bear markets," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 56(C).
    8. Jiang, Yonghong & Wu, Lanxin & Tian, Gengyu & Nie, He, 2021. "Do cryptocurrencies hedge against EPU and the equity market volatility during COVID-19? – New evidence from quantile coherency analysis," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    9. Feng, Hao & Gao, Da & Duan, Kun & Urquhart, Andrew, 2023. "Does Bitcoin affect decomposed oil shocks differently? Evidence from a quantile-based framework," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    10. Ma, Chaoqun & Tian, Yonggang & Hsiao, Shisong & Deng, Liurui, 2022. "Monetary policy shocks and Bitcoin prices," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    11. Li, Xingyi & Gan, Kai & Zhou, Qi, 2023. "Dynamic volatility connectedness among cryptocurrencies and China's financial assets in standard times and during the COVID-19 pandemic," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    12. Bouoiyour, Jamal & Selmi, Refk & Wohar, Mark E., 2018. "Measuring the response of gold prices to uncertainty: An analysis beyond the mean," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 105-116.
    13. Sangyup Choi & Junhyeok Shin, 2020. "Brave New World? Bitcoin is not the New Gold: Understanding Cryptocurrency Price Dynamics," Working papers 2020rwp-167, Yonsei University, Yonsei Economics Research Institute.
    14. 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).
    15. 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).
    16. Jareño, Francisco & González, María de la O & Tolentino, Marta & Sierra, Karen, 2020. "Bitcoin and gold price returns: A quantile regression and NARDL analysis," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    17. Choi, Sangyup & Shin, Junhyeok, 2022. "Bitcoin: An inflation hedge but not a safe haven," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 46(PB).
    18. Li, Dongxin & Hong, Yanran & Wang, Lu & Xu, Pengfei & Pan, Zhigang, 2022. "Extreme risk transmission among bitcoin and crude oil markets," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    19. Syed Abul, Basher & Perry, Sadorsky, 2022. "Forecasting Bitcoin price direction with random forests: How important are interest rates, inflation, and market volatility?," MPRA Paper 113293, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Duc Huynh, Toan Luu & Burggraf, Tobias & Wang, Mei, 2020. "Gold, platinum, and expected Bitcoin returns," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 56(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • G1 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets
    • F3 - International Economics - - International Finance

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:ebl:ecbull:eb-21-01020. 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: John P. Conley (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.