The Relationship Between Cat Bond Market and Other Financial Asset Markets: Evidence from Cointegration Tests

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between Cat Bonds market and the other financial markets. Precisely, cointegration tests (the Engle and Granger’s methodology) were applied on weekly data of five indexes over the period 2012- 2019 to test for the existence of a long-run dynamic equilibrium relationship between Cat Bonds market and four financial markets, namely, Insurance Linked Securities (ILS) market, S&P 500 (first stock market), MSCI (second stock market) and Corporate Bonds market. In addition, a comparative analysis correlation vs cointegration was conducted to verify whether Cat Bonds can be really considered as zero-beta assets in the short-run (correlation) as well as the long-run (cointegration). For correlation analysis we employed three correlation coefficients (Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient, Spearman’s Rank Correlation Coefficient and Kendall's Rank Correlation Coefficient). Overall, the main findings of this study showed that in the short-run, Cat Bonds are partially zero-beta assets while over the long-run they are entirely zero-beta assets. Such results will be of great importance for investors in their decision choice between a short strategy or a long strategy in Cat Bonds’ investing.