Comparative Analysis of Financial Market Volatility and Correlation Risk During the Great Recession and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

This paper offers a starting point for reflection on the similarities and differences of the impact on financial markets of the Great Recession of 2008 and of the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 in terms of volatility and correlation risk among the most significant financial indexes in Europe. More precisely, the dataset employed includes the daily returns of Ftse100, CaC40, Dax30 and FtseMib40, with reference to the two time periods in which the two major crises manifested their effects on the markets. We use two different methodological approaches: the analysis of the daily conditional variance using various families of GARCH models and the study of the weekly realized volatility using HAR models. Furthermore, the estimation of the dependence structure of the GARCH residuals using copula functions is performed.