Volatility causality and contagion in international securitized real estate markets

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PurposeThis paper aims to investigate volatility causality and return contagion on nine international securitized real estate markets by appealing to Markov-switching (MS) regime approach, from July 1992 to June 2014.Design/methodology/approachAn MS causality interaction model (Psaradakis et al., 2005), an MS vector auto-regression mode (Krolzig, 1997) and a multivariate return contagion model (Dungey et al., 2005) were used to implement the empirical investigations.FindingsThere exist regime shifts in the volatility causality pattern, with the volatility causality effects more pronounced during high volatility periods. During high volatility period, real estate markets’ causality interactions and inter-linkages contribute to strong spillover effect that leads to extreme volatility. However, there is relatively limited return contagion evidence in the securitized real estate markets examined. As such, the US financial crisis might probably be due to cross-market interdependence rather than contagion.Research limitations/implicationsBecause international investors incorporate into their portfolio allocation not only the long-run price relationship but also the short-run market volatility connectedness and return correlation structure, the results of this MS causality and contagion study have provided valuable information on the evaluation of regime-dependent securitized real estate market risk, as well as useful guidance on asset allocation and portfolio management decisions for institutional investors.Practical implicationsFinancial crisis is one of the key determinants of cross-market volatility interactions. Portfolio managers should be alerted of the observation that the US and the other developed securitized real estate markets are increasingly sharing “common market cycles” in recent years, thereby diminishing the diversification benefits. For policymakers, this research indicates that the volatilities of the US securitized real estate market could be helpful to predict those of other developed markets. It is also important for them to pay attention to those potential risk factors behind the amplified causality, contagion and volatility spillover at times of crisis. Finally, a wider implication for policymakers is to manage the transmission channels through which global stock market return and volatility shocks can affect the local economies and domestic financial markets, including securitized real estate markets.Originality/valueReal estate investments have emerged to show low correlation with stocks and bonds and contributed to portfolio optimization. With real estate that can serve as a type of consumption commodity and an investment tool, the risk-return profile of real estate is different from that of the underlying stock markets. Therefore, the performance and investment dynamics and real estate-stock link are not theoretically expected to be similar, that requires separate empirical investigations. This paper aims to stand out from the many papers on the same or similar topics in the application of the three MS methodologies to regime-dependent real estate market integration.