Non-Financial Markets and Interconnectedness between US and Emerging Financial Economies: Evidence from Covid-19 Financial Crisis

Abstract

During times of financial turmoil, when traditional assets experience significant volatility, commodity markets provide diversification benefits to investors. The objective is to investigate the factors influencing financial contagion between the United States and emerging Asian equity markets (China and India). The study analyzes the influential impact of the volatility index, gold, oil, and USD index on financial contagion among the markets. The dynamic conditional correlation analysis is utilized to explore the correlations during the US subprime and Covid-19 crises, and quantile regression analysis is conducted at different levels of time-varying correlations. The study's results suggest that financial contagion becomes more pronounced during periods of financial turmoil, and global financial crises contribute to alterations in the dependence structure between financial contagion among equity markets and global macroeconomic risk factors. The effect of financial contagion can be abridged through altering portfolio reallocation strategies according to investors’ risk appetite during high market volatility.