Volatility transmission in African foreign exchange markets

The concept of volatility transmission and co-movement has witnessed a resurgence in the international finance literature in recent years after the black swan events which gave evidence of financial market linkages. The purpose of this paper is to examine the dynamic sources of volatility transmission in the foreign exchange market in recent financial market integration in Africa.

A conceptual framework was adapted from the extant literature and was used as the basis of modeling exchange rate volatility transmission. This paper adopts a quantitative research approach and opts for augmented DCC model to empirically unearth the sources of exchange rate volatility transmission.

The key findings of the study are that, the African market is more prone to shock from outside than in the region. Macroeconomic news surprises influence volatility transmission and co-movements. Robust support is found for trade balance, interest rate and gross domestic product. These findings clearly demonstrate the low level of financial development and challenges that sometimes exist in exchange rate-policy implementation by policy makers.

Interested academics and practitioners working in the area might incorporate bilateral investment into the model of exchange rate correlation in future research.

Unilaterally considering exchange rate volatility transmission and subsequent augmentation of the DCC model, this study makes a modest contribution to the examination of exchange rate correlations in Africa. This study makes an important contribution in not only addressing this imbalance, but more importantly improving the relative literature on exchange rate volatility transmission.