IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecofin/v85y2026ics1062940826000628.html

Evaluating the safe haven potential of Chinese ESG stocks for international equity investors during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Author

Listed:
  • Shahzad, Khurram
  • Zhang, Yixiang
  • Imran, Zulfiqar Ali
  • Ahad, Muhammad

Abstract

Financial markets have experienced extreme fluctuations due to the global exacerbation of geopolitical tensions triggered by the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Therefore, the purpose of our study is to lessen the vulnerability of international equity investors by highlighting the safe-haven and hedging potential of Chinese environmental, social, and governance (ESG) stocks. The cross-quantilogram (CQ) based quantile-dependence structures and connectedness frameworks relevant to quantile vector autoregression (QVAR) and time-varying parameter vector autoregressive (TVP-VAR) are utilized to discover the safe haven properties of Chinese ESG stocks for developed, emerging and frontier stock markets during the Russia-Ukraine crisis. The results of our empirical analysis reveal that Chinese ESG stocks depict weak safe haven characteristics for all the international stock markets at the midterm investment horizon through the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Similarly, Chinese ESG stocks offer portfolio diversification benefits by playing the net-receiver role against the market shocks transmitted from international stock markets over normal and extreme market conditions. Lastly, as per hedging analysis, Chinese ESG stocks provide themost economical hedging option for frontier stock markets. Moreover, our study provides valuable implications that investing in ESG stocks assists investors and regulators in mitigating financial risks during crisis periods and encourages sustainable activities.

Suggested Citation

  • Shahzad, Khurram & Zhang, Yixiang & Imran, Zulfiqar Ali & Ahad, Muhammad, 2026. "Evaluating the safe haven potential of Chinese ESG stocks for international equity investors during the Russia-Ukraine conflict," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecofin:v:85:y:2026:i:c:s1062940826000628
    DOI: 10.1016/j.najef.2026.102640
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1062940826000628
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.najef.2026.102640?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

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G15 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - International Financial Markets

    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:eee:ecofin:v:85:y:2026:i:c:s1062940826000628. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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/inca/620163 .

    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.