Impact of Economic Crises on the Price Discovery Dynamics of Spot & Index Futures Market

We investigate the effect of economic crises on the direction of information flow and price discovery efficiency of spot and futures market by considering the near month Nifty50 index futures and its corresponding spot index. The period of study commences from January, 2004 to December, 2015 and the study period is further classified as pre-crisis, crisis and post crisis with four years band to measure the change in price discovery dynamics using VECM and the Schwarz & Szakmary common factor measures. The study findings not only highlight slight significant impact of economic crises on price discovery dynamics but also upheld the dominance of spot in price discovery process. We also find evidence on the gradual increase in common factor weights of futures and varying direction of information transmission during sub-sample study periods