Extreme risk contagion between international crude oil and China's energy-intensive sectors: New evidence from quantile Granger causality and spillover methods

Abstract

We use quantile Granger causality and quantile spillover indices to analyze the connectedness of returns and volatility between crude oil and China's energy-intensive sectors (steel, electricity, coal, and petrochemical). The results show that both the strength and the direction of the connectedness are related to financial conditions (measured by quantiles), with the tail quantiles having much stronger connectedness than the middle level. Bidirectional Granger causality between crude oil and energy-intensive sectors occurs in the left (right) tail of returns as well as in the right tail of volatility. According to the quantile spillover indices, the spillover indices of crude oil's return and volatility are 2.79 % and 0.09 %, respectively, in the median condition, while they are as high as 71.09 % and 287.42 %, respectively, in the extreme condition. We emphasize that the volatility contagion from crude oil to energy-intensive sectors is significant only in the right tail quantiles. Among different sectors, the strongest connectedness between crude oil and the coal sector is observed at the extremes, followed by the petrochemical sector. The impact of China's energy-intensive sectors on the crude oil market deserves attention, as crude oil is a net receiver of information from China's energy-intensive sectors during certain periods.