Nikolaos Antonakakis

OIL PRICES AND STOCK MARKET CORRELATION: A TIME-VARYING APPROACH

This paper examines the influence of oil prices on stock market time-varying correlation. Five stock market indices from both oil-importing (US, UK and Germany) and oil-exporting economies (Canada and Norway) are considered for the period 1988-2011. The findings from the DCC-GARCH framework suggest that the effects of oil price changes on stock market correlation are not constant over time and they depend on the status of the economy, i.e. whether it is oil-importing or oil-exporting. In addition, utilising the identification of oil price shocks in [1], [2] and [3] it is found that the aggregate demand shocks and precautionary demand shocks tend to exercise a negative effect on stock market correlation, whereas no effects from the supply-side oil price shocks can be reported. These findings have important implications for international portfolio diversifications and risk management.

The impact of fiscal austerity on suicide mortality: Evidence across the ‘Eurozone periphery’

While linkages between some macroeconomic phenomena and suicides in some countries have been explored, only two studies, hitherto, have established a causal relationship between fiscal austerity and suicide, albeit in a single country. The aim of this study is to provide the first systematic multiple-country evidence of a causal relationship of fiscal austerity on time-, gender-, and age-specific suicide mortality across five Eurozone peripheral countries, namely Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain over the period 1968-2012, while controlling for various socioeconomic differences. The impact of fiscal adjustments is found to be gender-, age- and time-specific. Specifically, fiscal austerity has short-, medium- and long-run suicide increasing effects on the male population in the 65-89 age group. A 1% reduction in government spending is associated with a 1.38%, 2.42% and 3.32% increase in the short-, medium- and long-run, respectively, of male suicides rates in the 65-89 age group in the Eurozone periphery. These results are highly robust to alternative measures of fiscal austerity. Improved labour market institutions help mitigate the negative effects of fiscal austerity on suicide mortality.

The synchronization of GDP growth in the G7 during US recessions

Using the Dynamic Conditional Correlation (DCC) model due to Engle (2002), we estimate time-varying correlations of quarterly real GDP growth among the G7 countries. In general, we find that rather heterogeneous patterns of international synchronization exist during US recessions. During the 2007–2009 recession, however, international co-movement increased substantially.

Dynamic co-movements between economic policy uncertainty and housing market returns

We examine dynamic correlations between housing market returns and economic policy uncertainty in the United States. Our findings suggest that correlations are time-varying and sensitive to economic fundamentals and US recessions.

Predictability of sustainable investments and the role of uncertainty: evidence from a non-parametric causality-in-quantiles test

ABSTRACT In this article, we examine sustainable investments returns predictability based on the U.S. Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) and a wide set of uncertainty and financial distress indicators for the period 2002:01–2014:12. To this end, we employ a novel non-parametric causality-in-quantile approach that captures non-linearities in returns distribution. Based on our findings we conclude that the aggregate economic policy uncertainty (EPU) indicator and some components have predictive ability for real returns of the U.S. sustainable investments index. Moreover, if we split our sample to before and after the global financial crisis our results suggest that predictors carry causal information for real returns only in the after-crisis period. Finally, some marginal evidence of predictability from sovereign debt is also observed at the lower and upper ends of the conditional distribution of the real returns of sustainable investments. Our results might entail policy implications for investors and market authorities.

International business cycle spillovers since the 1870s

This article considers the evolution of international business cycle interdependencies among 27 developed and developing countries since the beginning of 1870s, utilizing the generalized vector autoregressive (VAR)-based spillover index of Diebold and Yilmaz (2012), which allows the construction of a time-varying measure of business cycle spillovers. We find that, on average, 65% of the forecast error variance of the 27 countries’ business cycle shocks is due to international spillovers. However, the magnitude of international business cycle spillovers varies considerably over time. There is a clear increasing trend since the end of World War II and until the mid-1980s. After that, international business cycle interdependencies declined during the period that was dubbed the Great Moderation and stabilized around the beginning of the twenty-first century. During the Great Recession of 2008–2009, international business cycle spillovers increased to unprecedented levels. Finally, developed countries are consistently ranked as net transmitters of cyclical shocks to developing counties throughout the sample.

Forecasting volatility in developing countries’ nominal exchange returns

This article identifies the best models for forecasting the volatility of daily exchange returns of developing countries. An emerging consensus in the recent literature focusing on industrialized countries has noted the superior performance of the Fractionally Integrated Generalized Autoregressive Conditionally Heteroscedastic (FIGARCH) model in the case of industrialized countries, a result that is reaffirmed here. However, we show that when dealing with developing countries’ data the IGARCH model results in substantial gains in terms of the in-sample results and out-of-sample forecasting performance.

International Spillovers of Output Growth and Output Growth Volatility: Evidence from the G7

This paper examines the transmission of GDP growth and GDP growth volatility among the G7 countries over the period 1960Q1 – 2010Q4, using a multivariate GARCH model and volatility impulse response functions (VIRFs) to identify the source, magnitude and the duration of volatility spillovers. Results indicate the presence of positive own-country GDP growth spillovers in each country and cross-country GDP growth spillovers among most of the G7 countries. In addition, the large number of significant own-country output growth volatility spillovers and cross-country output growth volatility spillovers indicates that output growth shocks in most of the G7 countries affect output growth volatility in the other remaining countries. An additional finding is that the duration of output growth volatility spillovers has increased over time from some seven quarters in the 1970s to some ten quarters during the recent crisis, which is likely to be due to the increased integration of goods and financial markets.

The tourism and economic growth enigma: Examining an ambiguous relationship through multiple prisms

This article revisits the ambiguous relationship between tourism and economic growth, providing a comprehensive study of destinations across the globe which takes into account the key dynamics that influence tourism and economic performance. We focus on 113 countries over the period 1995 to 2014, clustered, for the first time, around six criteria that reflect their economic, political, and tourism dimensions. A panel vector autoregressive model is employed, which, in contrast to previous studies, allows the data to reveal any tourism-economy interdependencies across these clusters, without imposing a priori the direction of causality. Overall, the economic-driven tourism growth hypothesis seems to prevail in countries which are developing, nondemocratic, highly bureaucratic and have low tourism specialization. Conversely, bidirectional relationships are established for economies that are stronger, democratic and with higher levels of government effectiveness. Thus, depending on the economic, political, and tourism status of a destination, different policy implications apply.

The dynamic connectedness of UK regional property returns

In this study, we examine the network topology of UK regional property returns over the period 1973Q4–2014Q4 using a dynamic measure of connectedness developed by Diebold and Yilmaz (2014). Overall, our findings indicate that the transmission of inter-regional property returns shocks is an important source of regional property return fluctuations. What is more, this is a dynamic, event-dependent process which implies that, over time, any UK region can be both a net transmitter and a net receiver of shocks. This in turn is conducive to evidence that the ripple effect is not the only driving force propelling changes in the UK housing market. In fact, we find that the regions of the South West, Outer South East, East Midlands and Northern Ireland seem to be dominant transmitters of property returns shocks throughout the sample period. We further suggest that additional evidence regarding weak segmentation in the UK may stem from the fact that there is constant interaction across all regions over time. Most interestingly, we show that London may also act as a net-recipient of shocks. Findings are important for policy makers purporting to alleviate regional imbalances and achieve balanced growth, as well as investors who formulate portfolio diversification strategies. Our results exhibit robustness to a series of tests.