Testing and Predicting Volatility Spillover—A Multivariate GJR-GARCH Approach

This paper proposes a multivariate VAR-BEKK-GJR-GARCH volatility model to assess the dynamic interdependence among stock, bond and money market returns and volatility of returns. The proposed model allows for market interaction which provides useful information for pricing securities, measuring value-at-risk (VaR), and asset allocation and diversification, assisting financial regulators for policy implementation. The model is estimated by the maximum likelihood method with Student-t innovation density. The asymptotic chi-square tests for volatility spillovers and leverage effects are constructed and provide predictions of volatility and time-varying correlations of returns. Application of the proposed model to the Australia’s domestic stock, bond, and money markets reveals that the domestic financial markets are interdependent and volatility is predictable. In general, volatility spillovers from stock market to bond and to money markets due to common news. The empirical findings of this paper quantify the association among the security markets which can be utilized for improving agents’ decision-making strategies for risk management, portfolio selection and diversification.