Oil Prices and Equity Returns in the BRIC Countries

This paper measures the level by which global oil price returns influence the stock returns and volatility in the BRIC equity markets and observes the time-varying conditional correlation between BRIC equity returns and oil price returns. The study concludes that the level of impact of oil price returns on equity returns and volatility in the BRIC countries depends on the extent to which these countries are net importers or net exporters of oil. It also concludes that despite the aggressive economic growth of the BRIC countries in the past 25 years, the volatility of stock returns in these economies does not have a significant impact on the volatility of global oil price returns.