Contemporaneous Spill-Over Among Equity, Gold, and Exchange Rate Implied Volatility Indices

This paper examines the contemporaneous spill-over effects among the CBOE implied volatility indices for stocks (VIX), gold (GVZ) and the exchange rate (EVZ). We use the 'identification through heteroskedasticity' approach of Rigobon (2003) to decompose the contemporaneous relationship between these implied volatility indices into causal relationships. Our findings suggest that there is strong unidirectional, spill-over from VIX to GVZ and EVZ, where increases in stock market volatility lead to increases in gold and exchange rate volatility; and bi-directional spill-over between GVZ and EVZ. We emphasize the implications of our model by comparing the impulse-responses generated by our structural VAR with the impulse-responses of a traditional VAR. Our results show that the responses to shocks originating in GVZ and EVZ are seriously overestimated in the traditional VAR. These findings on the direction and magnitude of spill-over and the long-run impact on volatility have important implications for portfolio and risk management.