Volatility Spillover from Carbon Prices to Stock Prices: Evidence from China’s Carbon Emission Trading Markets

The carbon emission trading markets represent an emerging domain within China. The primary objective of this study is to explore whether carbon price volatility influences stock market volatility among companies subject to these emission trading regulations. Employing daily returns data from 293 publicly traded companies regulated by these emission trading markets, this study encompasses the national carbon market and eight pilot regional carbon markets spanning from August 2013 to October 2023. The results demonstrate that volatility in regional carbon prices positively impacts the stock volatility of companies in the corresponding emission trading region, indicating a volatility spillover effect. Moreover, this spillover effect is more pronounced in sectors marked by lesser carbon intensity than those with greater carbon intensity. The volatility transmission is more pronounced in coastal areas than in inland regions. However, no notable distinctions in volatility transmission are discerned between the periods before and throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Vector autoregression analyses substantiate that lagged carbon price fluctuations possess limited predictive capacity for contemporaneous equity market volatility and vice versa. The robustness of these outcomes is fortified by applying the E-GARCH model, which accounts for the volatility clustering phenomenon. As the first investigation into the volatility spillover effect between China’s emission trading market and corresponding stock markets, this study offers valuable insights into the investment strategies of retail investors, the formulation of carbon regulations by policymakers, and the carbon emission strategies of corporate managers.