The long-run relationship between the spot and futures markets under multiple regime-shifts: Evidence from Turkish derivatives exchange

► We examine the long-run relationship between the spot and future prices in Turkey. ► We apply cointegration test allowing multiple structural breaks in the data. ► Our results indicate the existence of structural breaks in our data. ► The spot and futures markets have a long-run relationship with structural breaks. ► The markets are efficient in the long-run. The paper examines the long-run relationships between the spot and future prices of Istanbul Stock Exchange 30 index (ISE-30) and foreign currencies including the Turkish Lira-US Dollar (TL/USD) and Turkish Lira-Euro (TL/EUR). We analyze the weekly data covering the period from February 9, 2005 to October 17, 2012. Considering structural breaks is important for our analysis since our period consists of recent financial crisis. Therefore, we employ the unit root tests developed by Carrion-i-Silvestre et al. (2009) and the Maki’s (2012) cointegration test allowing for an unknown number of breaks. We find that spot and the futures prices are cointegrated in the long-run after we consider structural breaks in our data. Our results indicate that the markets are efficient.