Economic policy uncertainty and commodity market volatility: implications for economic recovery

As a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, most commodities experienced significant price drops, which were expected to continue well into 2020. As a result, the Markov switching model is used to study the influence of policy uncertainty and the COVID-19 pandemic on commodity prices in the USA. Commodity markets are stimulated by economic policy uncertainty, according to results from a two-state Markov switching model. In both high and low regimes, economic policy uncertainty (EPU) influences the commodity market, according to the study’s findings. However, in the high regime, EPU has a greater influence on the energy and metal sectors. EPU has different influences on commodity markets in high- and low-volatility regimes, according to this study. There is a wide range of correlations between COVID-19 outcomes and EPU and how the prices of natural gas, oil, corn, silver, soybean, copper, gold, and steel respond to these tremors, in both high- and low-volatility tenure. Oil and natural gas, on the other hand, are unaffected by shifts in COVID-19 death rates under either regime. Results show that in both high- and low-volatility regimes, the demand and supply for most commodities are responsive to historical prices.