The role of China's crude oil futures in world oil futures market and China's financial market

Abstract

China's crude oil futures (COF) denominated in RMB were formally launched in 2018 and traded in the Shanghai International Exchange (INE), which was an important milestone in China's energy financialization. Combining TVP-VAR method and DY spillover index, this paper firstly studied the information spillover relationship between the world's major COF and crude oil spot (COS) markets before and after the launch of China's COF. It is found that China's COF mainly play the role of net information receiver in world COF/COS market, and its influence in international market and price discovery function needs to be improved. Further, this paper comprehensively considered China's financial system, taking volatility of financial time series as risk proxy to investigate the risk spillover effect. The results show that the financial attributes of China's COF have become prominent. The dynamic analysis shows that since the launch of China's COF, the degree of its net spillover to other markets has generally been on the decrease, assuming a net risk transmitter role. On this basis, this paper puts forward policy recommendations to promote the development of China's COF.