Price Contagion and Risk Spillover in the Global Commodities Market: COVID-19 Pandemic vs. Global Financial Crisis

Utilizing cross-correlation-based Planar Maximally Filtered Graph, and conditional Value-at-Risk-based extreme risk spillover network approaches, we analyze the structure and dynamics of price contagion and risk transmission between different commodity groups in the global commodity futures market during the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and different phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. As expected, owing to the fundamental differences between the two crises, we find very divergent commodity network structures and non-identical direction of risk transmission between commodities in these two crises. Gold and silver, however, continued to play their traditional role of risk transmitters in both crises – right at the beginning of the GFC but towards the latter part of the COVID19 crisis.