Volatility Impact of COVID-19 on Macro-Economic Indicators in India

Covid-19 (C-19) has resulted in economic and financial meltdowns across the world. The countermeasures to tackle the virus created economic loss for people from every stratum. Macroeconomic indices like unemployment, inflation, and GDP growth rates were severely hit. This study estimates the C-19's volatility impact on four macroeconomic variables (gold prices, interest rate, crude oil prices, and exchange rate in the Indian economy. The paper uses daily time series data of the macroeconomic variables and cases of C-19 in India for the period from 5th January 2020 to 4th April 2022. The volatility impact of COVID-19 is measured using Bi-Variate GARCH models. The GARCH models (BEKK-GARCH [BG] and DCC-GARCH [DG]) provide robust results. The result finds the existence of both short and long-term C-19's volatility impact on all variables, although in different degrees. This paper is original since it considers the impact of these four variables altogether and the study contributes to the literature by capturing the volatility spillover effects of these four variables using BEKK-GARCH and DCC-GARCH. This paper significantly delivers key implications to policymakers to critically treat C-19 for economic stability while making policies.