Dependence and Contagion Between Asset Prices in Poland and Abroad. A Copula Approach

Abstract

We investigate the dependence structure between Polish and foreign financial assets, including stocks, bonds and foreign exchange. Our interest is in the importance of global factors for asset valuation and on the strength of financial contagion. We work in the copula framework, which offers a full description of the dependence structure. Importantly, we assess many copula families and pay special attention to the testing procedure thereof. Polish equities, currency and to some extent long-term sovereign bonds exhibit economically significant tail dependence, while short-term bonds appear relatively unaffected. Symmetric tail behaviour characterises the majority of asset pairs, though we also find significant asymmetries in a number of cases, with assets more likely to post large losses when global conditions significantly deteriorate, rather than to gain when they improve.

Keywords: Copulas, Dependence, Tail dependence coefficients, Contagion, Asset classes

JEL Classification: C58, G15