Green Bond, Renewable Energy Stocks and Carbon Price: Dynamic Connectedness, Hedging and Investment Strategies during COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

This study has been inspired by the emergence of socially responsible investment practices in mainstream investment activity wherein it examines the transmission of return patterns between green bonds, carbon prices, and renewable energy stocks using daily data spanning from 1st January 2013 to 22nd September 2020. In this study, our dataset comprises the price indices of S&P Green Bond, Solactive Global Solar, Solactive Global Wind, S&P Global Clean Energy and Carbon. We employ the TVP-VAR approach to investigate the return spillovers and connectedness, and various portfolio techniques including minimum variance portfolio, minimum correlation portfolio and the recently developed minimum connectedness portfolio to test portfolio performance. Additionally, a LASSO dynamic connectedness model is used for robustness purposes. The empirical results from the TVP VAR indicate that the dynamic total connectedness across the assets is heterogeneous over time and economic event dependent. Moreover, our findings suggest clean energy dominates all other markets and is seen to be the main net transmitter of shocks in the entire network with Green Bonds and Solactive Global Wind emerging to be the major recipients of shocks in the system. Based on the hedging effectiveness, we show that bivariate and multivariate portfolios significantly reduce the risk of investing in a single asset except for Green Bonds. Finally, the minimum connectedness portfolio reaches the highest Sharpe ratio implying that information concerning the return transmission process is helpful for portfolio creation. The same pattern has been observed during the COVID-19 pandemic period.