The Impact of Price Support Policies and Public Emergencies on Agricultural Futures Markets — A Multifractal Cross-Correlations Analysis between China and the US

Abstract

This paper investigates the presence and asymmetry of cross-correlations between agricultural futures markets in China and the US as well as the impact of price support policies and public emergencies (Sino–US trade conflict and COVID-19 pandemic) on the cross-correlations by the multifractal methods. The results show that the fluctuation characteristics and conduction directions of cross-correlations are asymmetric. The price fluctuations of soybean and corn futures in China are easier to be affected by the US soybean and corn futures. We find that the cross-correlations are multifractal under different price support policies and pubic emergencies. The price support policies with greater interventions on soybean and corn prices have aggravated the complexity of cross-correlations between the two futures markets in China and the US. The soybean and corn futures in China are hardly correlated to the US futures under the dual effect of the Sino–US trade conflict and the COVID-19 pandemic. The Sino–US trade conflict strengthens the complexity of cross-correlation for soybean futures and weakens it for corn futures, while the COVID-19 pandemic enhances the complexity of cross-correlations for soybean and corn futures. In addition, the fat-tailed probability distributions in different price support policy and public emergency periods have a dominant influence on the multifractality of cross-correlations.