Optimal dynamic hedging via copula-threshold-GARCH models

The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, we exploit copula methodology, with two threshold GARCH models as marginals, to construct a bivariate copula-threshold-GARCH model, simultaneously capturing asymmetric nonlinear behaviour in univariate stock returns of spot and futures markets and bivariate dependency, in a flexible manner. Two elliptical copulas (Gaussian and Student’s-t) and three Archimedean copulas (Clayton, Gumbel and the Mixture of Clayton and Gumbel) are utilized. Second, we employ the presenting models to investigate the hedging performance for five East Asian spot and futures stock markets: Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. Compared with conventional hedging strategies, including Engle’s dynamic conditional correlation GARCH model, the results show that hedge ratios constructed by a Gaussian or Mixture copula are the best-performed in variance reduction for all markets except Japan and Singapore, and provide close to the best returns on a hedging portfolio over the sample period. © 2008 IMACS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. JEL classification: C50; D81; G15