Informational Efficiency of VKOSPI Futures and Policy Implications

As global exchanges have listed volatility derivatives competitively, volatility has been recognized as a new investment vehicle and/or a hedging means for traditional financial assets such as stocks and bonds. Following this trend, KRX has begun to announce VKOSPI from KOSPI200 index options prices since April 13, 2009 and listed VKOSPI futures on November 17, 2014. However, VKOSPI futures has still not been activated than those listed in developed countries. In this paper, we investigate the informational efficiency of VKOSPI futures and analyze the illiquidity problem of VKOSPI futures. More specifically, we execute a VAR analysis of VKOSPI, VKOSPI futures, VIX and VIX futures to find out their lead-lag relations. In addition, we further conduct a Granger causality test, impulse response analysis and variance decomposition to examine their dynamic relations. According to the results, we find that VKOSPI leads VKOSPI futures and that VIX and VIX futures lead VKOSPI and VKOSPI futures significantly. Based on the results above, lastly, we propose several policies to make the VKOSPI futures market more active and informative.