Volatility Spillover Effects between BDI with CCFI and SCFI Shipping Freight Indices

Abstract

The objective of this study is to investigate the volatility spillover effects among BDI, CCFI and SCFI. This paper will divide the empirical analysis section into two periods to analyze and compare the differences in volatility spillover effect between shipping freight indices before and after the outbreak of COVID-19 separately. First, in order to compare the mean spillover impact and index lead-lag correlations in BDI and CCFI indices, along with BDI and SCFI indices before and after COVID-19, the co-integration analysis and the test of Granger causality built on the VAR model were utilized. Second, the impulse response and variance decomposition are employed in this work to investigate how the shipping freight index responds to shocks experienced by itself and other freight indices in a short period. Before the COVID-19 epidemic, the results demonstrated that the BDI freight index is the Granger cause of the variable CCFI freight index. But the BDI and CCFI freight indices have no apparent lead-lag relationships after COVID-19, and this empirical result echoes the cointegration test result. After the COVID-19 epidemic, the SCFI index leads the BDI index. This study employs the VAR-BEKK-GARCH joint model to explore the volatility spillover results between dry bulk and container transport markets before and after COVID-19. The empirical results demonstrate that after COVID-19, fluctuations in the BDI index still affect the CCFI index in the maritime market. However, there is no proof of a volatility spillover relationship between the BDI and SCFI after the COVID-19 epidemic. This study will provide an insight into the volatility relationship among BDI, CCFI and SCFI before and after the the COVID-19 epidemic occurred.