Volatility Connectedness of Chinese Financial Institutions: Evidence from a Frequency Dynamics Perspective

Accurately measuring systemic financial risk and analyzing its sources are important issues. This study focuses on the frequency dynamics of volatility connectedness in Chinese financial institutions using a spectral representation framework of generalized forecast error variance decomposition with the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator vector autoregression. It assesses the volatility connectedness network using complex network analysis techniques. The data are derived from 31 publicly traded Chinese financial institutions between 4 January 2011 and 31 August 2023, encompassing the Chinese stock market crash in 2015 and the COVID-19 pandemic. The frequency dynamics of the volatility connectedness results indicate that long-term connectedness peaks and cross-sectoral connectedness rises during periods of financial instability, especially in the recent bull market (2014–2015) and the 2015 Chinese stock market crash. The volatility connectedness of Chinese financial institutions declined during the COVID-19 pandemic but rose during the post-COVID-19 pandemic period. Network estimation results show that securities triggered the 2015 bull market, whereas banks were the main risk transmitters during the 2015 market crash. These results have important practical implications for supervisory authorities.