Economic policy uncertainty and dynamic spillover among precious metals under market conditions: Does COVID-19 have any effects?

ABSTRACT

The paper examines the impact of Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) on the dynamic connectedness among the precious metals before and over the COVID-19 pandemic period, using the Quantile-VAR method. This approach allows us to capture the left and right tails of the distributions of the precious metals returns corresponding to spillover effects under different market conditions the bear, normal, and bull market states among these assets. We find that the total spillover index (TCI) varies across quantiles and increases widely during extreme market conditions, with a noticeable influence of the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Then, studying the impact of the economic uncertainty on the connectedness among the four precious metals, we find that gold still plays a dominant “safe-haven” asset in hedging market uncertainty, with other precious metals showing heterogeneous responses to the presence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, we argue that the COVID-19 pandemic significantly affects the dynamic connectedness among precious metals and the relationship between economic policy uncertainty and dynamic connectedness. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd