Are REITS hedge or safe haven against oil price fall?

Abstract

This paper studies the hedge against falling oil prices and the safe haven properties of fourteen major country-specific real estate investment trusts (REITs) indices for the Asian, American, European, and worldwide geographies. Our analyses are performed from both, returns and conditional volatility perspectives. Our sample spans from January 2016 until August 2022, covering the COVID-19 pandemics and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine military conflict. We find that during COVID-19, only the Japan REITs, in terms of both returns and volatility, act as a hedge for oil whereas the only hedge during the Russia-Ukraine conflict is the Netherland REITs. In addition, we document diverse degrees of safe-haven and diversifiers properties for REITS from diverse geographies along the full sample and the respective sub-samples for both bearish conditions and elevated volatility in the oil market. Our results imply that market regulators should focus on controlling volatility in crude oil and REITs markets, especially throughout times of financial distress, as daily return volatility monitoring is a pivotal requirement for optimized investment management. Our study provides important knowledge for investors, policymakers, and market regulators.