An Empirical Analysis of the Interrelation between Spot Market & Non-Deliverable Forward Market of USD/INR in the Pre- and Post-Currency Futures Era

The main objective of this paper is to study whether the introduction of the currency futures had an impact of the interrelation and information flows between the INR-USD spot and offshore forward (i.e., non-deliverable forward) markets. The econometric models have been used in this study, and long-term equilibrium relationship is measured through Johansen Co-integration test and Granger causality test is employed measure the short-term relationship. The result of the co-integration test proves that there exists a significant long-term equilibrium relation between the USD-INR spot and NDF rates. Causality test confirms that there is bidirectional causality between the spot and the NDF market in Sub-period 1, whereas a unidirectional causality exists in the Sub-period 2. We adopt the augmented GARCH formulation to compare NDF and spot market. We find that before currency future was introduced there existed a mean and volatility spillover effect from the NDF to spot market and vice versa, i.e., both directions. But after the introduction of currency futures, however, the results reversed with unidirectional mean spillover effect only from the NDF to the spot market. Also, the volatility spillover effect exists only in the same direction. These findings suggest that there is information flows between NDF and spot markets, Hence it is concluded that introduction of currency future has changed the direction of the dynamic relation in these two markets