This study assesses the role of gold, crude oil and cryptocurrency as a safe haven for traditional, sustainable, and Islamic investors during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Using Wavelet coherence analysis and spillover index methodologies in bivariate and multivariate settings, this study examines the correlation of these assets for different investment horizons. The findings suggest that gold, oil and Bitcoin exhibited low coherency with each stock index across almost all considered investment horizons until the onset of the COVID-19. Conversely, with the outbreak of the pandemic, the return spillover is more intense across financial assets, and a significant pairwise return connectedness between each equity index and hedging asset is observed. Hence, gold, oil, and Bitcoin do not exhibit safe-haven characteristics. However, by decomposing the time-varying co-movements into different investment horizons, we find that total and pairwise connectedness among the assets are primarily driven by a higher-frequency band (up to 4 days). It indicates that investors have diversification opportunities with gold, oil, and Bitcoin at longer horizons. The results are robust over different types of equity investors (traditional, sustainable, and Islamic) and various investment horizons.
Maintaining a stable exchange rate is a challenging task for the world, especially for developing economies. This study examines the impact of asymmetric exchange rates on trade flows in selected Asian countries and finds that the effects of increased exchange rate volatility on exports and imports differ among Pakistan, Malaysia, Japan, and Korea. The quarterly data from the period 1980 to 2018 is collected from the International Financial Statistics (IFS) database maintained by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). We employ both linear and non-linear Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) models for estimation. The non-linear models yielded more significant findings, while the linear models did not indicate any significant effects of exchange rate volatility on trade flows. The results of the study suggest that in the case of Pakistan, both the linear and non-linear models indicate that increased exchange rate volatility adversely affects exports and imports, while decreased volatility enhances both. This implies that stabilizing the exchange rate would be beneficial for Pakistan's trade. In contrast, the linear model applied to Malaysia shows no long-run effects of exchange rate volatility on exports. However, the result suggests that decreased volatility stimulates Malaysia's exports. Therefore, in the case of Malaysia, stabilizing the exchange rate could contribute to boosting exports. We also found that increased exchange rate volatility boosts exports of Japan. On the other hand, decreased volatility hurts exports of Japan. As for the long-run effects of exchange rate volatility on imports, we found that increased volatility boosts imports of Korea. The study provides various policy implications regarding the impact of exchange rate volatility on trade flows in developing economies. The study highlights the importance of country-specific considerations in understanding the impact of exchange rate volatility on trade flows, and has important policy implications for promoting trade and economic growth in these nations. It emphasizes the need to model exchange rate volatility separately for developed and developing countries and to continue research and analysis to identify ways to mitigate its negative effects on the economy.