Returns and volatility spillover between stock prices and exchange rates : Empirical evidence from IBSA countries

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the nature of returns and volatility spillovers between exchange rates and stock price in the IBSA nations (India, Brazil, South Africa). Design/methodology/approach – The study uses VAR framework and the recently proposed Spillover measure of Diebold and Yilmaz to examine the returns and volatility spillover between exchange rates and stock prices of IBSA nations. In addition, multivariate GARCH with time varying variance‐covariance BEKK model is used as a benchmark against the spillover methodology proposed by Diebold and Yilmaz. Findings – The results of multivariate GARCH model suggests the integration between stock and foreign exchange markets and indicates the existence of bi‐directional volatility spillover between stock and foreign exchange markets in the IBSA countries. Spillover results using the Diebold Yilmaz model suggest the bi‐directional contribution between stock and foreign exchange market, in terms of both returns and volatility spillovers. Overall, results confirm the presence of returns and volatility spillovers within the IBSA nations and, in particular, the stock markets play a relatively more important role than foreign exchange markets in the first and second moment interactions and spillovers. Practical implications – The market participants may consider the relationship between the exchange rate and stock index to predict the future movement of each other effectively. Multinational companies interested in exchange rate forecasting may consider the stock market as an important attribute. There is an interesting implication for portfolio managers too because of the spillover stock and foreign exchange markets. This knowledge would help to create a fund which performs well. Moreover, the paper can help regulators and policy makers in IBSA nations to understand the structure of the market in a better way and then design their policies. Originality/value – The study contributes to the literature by extending the existing studies on the spillover between stock price and exchange rate by investigating the issue for three emerging economies, India, Brazil and South Africa. Unlike most studies in the literature which focus on multivariate GARCH model, this is the first study which explores the issue of returns and volatility spillover between the stock prices and the exchange rates using spillover measure of Diebold and Yilmaz and much longer and recent daily data. Moreover, multivariate GARCH with time varying variance‐covariance BEKK model is used as a benchmark against the spillover methodology proposed by Diebold and Yilmaz.