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Finance Research Letters xxx (xxxx) xxxx

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Finance Research Letters


journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/frl

New evidence for the inflation hedging potential of US stock


returns
Afees A. Salisua,b, , Umar B. Ndakoc, Lateef O. Akannid,e

a
Department for Management of Science and Technology Development, Ton Duc Thang University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
b
Faculty of Business Administration, Ton Duc Thang University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
c
Monetary Policy Department, Central Bank of Nigeria
d
Centre for Econometric & Allied Research, University of Ibadan, Nigeria
e
Centre for the Study of the Economies of Africa, Abuja, Nigeria

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: Most of the empirical studies in the literature do not seem to support the use of US stocks as a
Price level data good hedge against inflation. In this study, we demonstrate that the results can be upturned if the
Index level data price level data for the individual constituents of US stock returns is used rather than the index
US S&P 500 index level data. This conclusion is robust to alternative methods of analyses, data frequencies and
Homogenous slope
measures of inflation. In sum, estimating with the aggregate (index level) data when analysing
Heterogeneous slope
the inflation hedging potential of US stock returns, may lead to wrong conclusions if not carefully
implemented.

1. The Motivation

There is a big debate as to whether the index level data should be used for empirical analyses particularly for forecasting rather
than using the price level data which constitute the index level data. Baltagi (2013) renders a succinct review of the different views
which are classified in terms of Pooling Forecasts versus Panel Data Forecasting; Forecasting of Aggregates versus Aggregating
Forecasts and Homogeneous versus Heterogeneous Panel Forecasts. These classifications form the basis for this empirical enquiry.
The interest however lies in the analyses of S&P 500 stock index. The choice of this index is deliberate for two reasons. First, it is the
most widely used index level data for empirical analyses given its level of integration in the global financial markets. Second, the
consideration of the inflation hedging potential of the S&P 500 stocks will offer both investment and policy insights to a wider
spectrum of investors and policy makers who may be directly or indirectly influenced by the macroeconomic conditions of the US
economy.
Studies on the inflation hedging property of stock returns are quite huge and a chunk of these studies are devoted to the US stock
market either as a single case or as a group with other stock markets (see Arnold and Auer, 2015 for a review). One common feature
of virtually all the studies to the best of our knowledge is the use of the index level data as well as the evidence in support of the non-
existence of inflation hedge for US stock returns.1 We however argue that this conclusion can be upturned if the inherent hetero-
geneity in the individual common stocks is reflected in the estimation process. While alternative methods have been proposed in the


Correspondence author at: Department for Management of Science and Technology Development, Ton Duc Thang University, Ho Chi Minh City,
Vietnam
E-mail address: afees.adebare.salisu@tdtu.edu.vn (A.A. Salisu).
1
For the earlier studies reporting a perverse inflation hedge of US equities, see Jaffe & Mandelker (1976), Geske & Roll (1983) and Cochran &
DeFina (1993). A review of the recent studies can be obtained from Bampinas & Panagiotidis (2016) and Al-Nassar & Bhatti (2019).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2019.101384
Received 9 August 2019; Received in revised form 7 November 2019; Accepted 25 November 2019
1544-6123/ © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Afees A. Salisu, Umar B. Ndako and Lateef O. Akanni, Finance Research Letters,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2019.101384
A.A. Salisu, et al. Finance Research Letters xxx (xxxx) xxxx

literature to circumvent this problem of perverse relationship between stocks and inflation, we hold the view that the conventional
method can still yield results more favourable to a positive relationship between the two variables as long as the price level data,
rather than the index level data, is used for analyses. Nonetheless, we consider various approaches to demonstrate why we argue that
details may matter in the analysis of the use of stocks to hedge against inflation. The few exceptions however are the works of
Boudoukh et al. (1994),
Luintel and Paudyal (2006) and Bampinas and Panagiotidis (2016) which utilize industry level data in the estimation process. We
advance the analyses further to argue why the S&P 500 index should not be used when analysing the inflation hedging potential of
the US stock market. This is the main motivation for the study and it is actualized in the following ways. First, we use the index level
data of S&P 500 stocks as a proxy for the aggregate stock price data while the individual prices of the constituent stocks of S&P 500
are used for the price level (panel) data. The former is estimated with time series techniques while the latter involves panel data
techniques. Since traditionally the variables in a typical inflation hedge model are expressed in growth/returns form, we are able to
circumvent the problem of unit root. Second, we assume both homogenous and heterogeneous slope coefficients and further examine
whether accounting for the latter matters in the understanding of the nexus. Overall and contrary to the evidence in the literature, we
find that US stock returns can serve as a good hedge against inflation if the price level data is used regardless of the data sample,
estimation method and measure of inflation. More importantly, estimating with the aggregate data may lead to wrong conclusions if
not carefully implemented. The next immediate section provides the justification for the use of stocks as a useful hedge against
inflation. Section 3 highlights the methodology for the study followed by the discussion of results in Section 4 with several robustness
checks, while Section 5 concludes the paper.

2. How can stocks serve as useful hedges against inflation?

The generalized Fisher hypothesis2 assumes independence between the expected real return in the stock market and inflation.
There are two important reasons why stocks can serve as good hedges against inflation (see Lintner, 1973; Arnold and Auer, 2015).
First, equities represent claims against real assets whose values are expected to keep pace with changes in purchasing power (see, for
example, Fama, 1981; Geske and Roll, 1983). Second, firms leverage their capital and are net debtors on average. Thus, shareholders
would benefit from unexpected inflation as the firm's long-term commitments to pay fixed nominal amounts decrease in real value
(the debtor-creditor hypothesis) (Arnold and Auer, 2015). Moreover, dividends are paid from corporate earnings and should also
increase with inflation (see, amongst others, Basse and Reddemann, 2011; Baker and Jabbouri, 2016, 2017).3
The empirical evaluation of the generalized Fisher hypothesis theoretical perspectives has come under two strands. The first
strand highlights the earlier studies which essentially cover the US and the findings do not seem to support the hypothesis (see
Lintner, 1973; Oudet, 1973; Jaffe and Mandelker, 1976; Geske and Roll, 1983; Cochran and DeFina, 1993). The second strand
attempts to resolve the perverse inflation hedge of stocks from methodological perspective by investigating the long-run hedging
properties of stocks using long span of data (see Cagan, 1972; Boudoukh and Richardson, 1993; Solnik and Solnik, 1997; Lothian and
Simaan, 1998; Schotman and Schweitzer, 2000; Lothian and McCarthy, 2001), and cointegration analysis (see Ely and
Robinson, 1997; Anari and Kolari, 2001, 2010; Al-Nassar and Bhatti, 2019).
We offer a different perspective to the generalized Fisher hypothesis. First, we argue for the use of price level data rather than the
aggregate (index) level data. The hypothesis can easily be verified regardless of the data span as long as the price level data is used.
Rather than using a long range of data as argued for in the literature, this can be circumvented by using data covering the individual
stocks in the index level data. This approach is favoured particularly for stock exchanges with small data scope for the index level
data and therefore our contribution is not trivial. The second approach proposed relates to the need to account for time-variation in
the analysis of the relationship between stock returns and inflation. There are a number of studies suggesting that the nexus between
asset prices and inflation may exhibit time-variation (see Salisu and Adediran, 2019, for a review of the literature). In sum, we are
able to reflect the existing methodologies in the current study while also proposing plausible alternatives to validate the generalized
Fisher hypothesis for the US stock market.

3. Methodology and data

The motivation for modeling the inflation hedging potential of any asset class is rooted in the Fisher hypothesis which assumes
that nominal interest rate is expressed as the sum of real return and inflation rate. Thus, if the information available at time t − 1 is
processed efficiently, the market will set the price of any asset j so that the expected nominal return Et 1 (r njt ) on the asset from t − 1 to
t is the sum of the appropriate equilibrium expected real return Et 1 (r rjt ) and the best possible assessment of the expected inflation rate
Et − 1(πt) from t − 1 to t (Arnold and Auer, 2015). Consequently, for an efficient market, the real returns on assets may be in-
dependent of the expected rate of inflation since a company's nominal revenues and profits are expected to grow about the same rate
as inflation, after a period of adjustment. Put differently, a positive correlation is expected between the nominal return of the hedging

2
Fisher (1930) was the first to formally formulate the hypothesis for the relationship between asset returns
and inflation. The term generalized Fisher effect was coined by Jaffe & Mandelker (1976) and it is defined as
the hypothesis of independence between the expected real return in the stock market and the anticipated inflation rate.
3
We thank the anonymous reviewer for suggesting other perspectives through which stocks can act as good hedges against inflation. Other
reasons are rendered in Bampinas & Panagiotidis (2016).

2
A.A. Salisu, et al. Finance Research Letters xxx (xxxx) xxxx

asset and inflation.


The methodology adopted in this study is in two-fold. The first methodology assumes homogeneous slope coefficient and this
assumption is extended to both the index level (time series) data and price level (panel) data. The second methodology assumes some
level of heterogeneity in the slope coefficient and therefore a threshold regression model expressed in both time series and panel form
is employed. In any case, several studies in the literature have attested to the nonlinear and time-varying relationship between asset
returns and inflation (see Salisu and Adediran, 2019 for a review).4 For the first assumption, we specify the following regressions
respectively for the index level and price level data as follows:
Price level data: rit = + t + µi + it ; i = 1, 2, 3, ...,N ; t = 1, 2, 3, ...,T . (1)

Index level data: rt = + t + t (2)


where for each firm i, rt is the stock returns computed as log(pt / pt 1 ) with pt defined as stock price; for the index level data, the
composite stock price index described as the US S&P 500 index is used for the computation of stock returns used for the time series
analyses; πt is the consumer price inflation rate also computed as the first difference of log of aggregate consumer prices and since it is
firm invariant, it is constant across firms. Noticeable distinction between Eqs. (1) and (2) lies in the way the stock data is utilized in
the estimation process. While the price level data is structured in panel form since the individual stock prices comprising the index are
used in the estimation process, the index level data is structured in time series form since it involves the aggregate (index) of all the
S&P 500 stocks.
For the second assumption, we formulate the following threshold-based regression models for up to three thresholds (see
Wang, 2015):
Single threshold: rit = + it (qit < ) 1 + it (qit ) 2 + µi + it (3)
where qit is the threshold variable and γ is the threshold parameter that divides the equation into two regimes with coefficients β1 and
β2 while μi denotes the firm effect. We can re-write Eq. (1) in a more compact form as follows:

tI (qt < )
rit = + it (qit , ) + µi + it where t (qt , )=
tI (qt ) (4)

Double threshold: rit = + t (qt < 1) 1 + t( 1 qt < 2) 2 + t (qt 2) 3 + µi + it (5)

where γ1 and γ2 are the thresholds that divide the equation into three regimes with coefficients β1, β2, and β3. The triple panel data
threshold regression model can be written as:
Triple Threshold: rit = + t (qt < 1) 1 + t( 1 qt < 2) 2 + t( 2 qt < 3) 3
+ t (qt 3) 4 + µi + it (6)
where γ1, γ2 and γ3are the thresholds that divide the equation into four regimes with coefficients β1, β2, β3 and β4. The sequential
approach of Bai (1997) and Bai and Perron (1998)is used to estimate the thresholds. In order to test for the presence of threshold
effect in the threshold-based regression model, the following F statistic can be constructed:
(S0 S1)
F1 = ; H0 : = 2; H1:
^2 1 1 2
(7)

where S0 is the residual sum of squares (RSS) for the restricted model under H0 while S1 is the unrestricted model under H1; is the ^2
estimated variance for the unrestricted model that accounts for the degree of freedom. The non-rejection of H0 implies the absence of
threshold effect while the reverse is the case when H0 is rejected. There are four possible outcomes when evaluating the inflation
hedging potential of any asset class namely worse or perverse hedge, partial hedge, full hedge and superior performance. For con-
venience, let us assume β as the slope coefficient, the worse hedge connotes a situation where β ≤ 0; the partial hedge requires that 0
< β < 1; the full hedge implies that β = 1 while there is superior performance if β > 1.
Data utilized for the study is monthly frequency and it covers the period 2009M02 to 2019M04, the choice of which is influenced
by the availability of data for most of the individual stocks in the S&P 500 index. This period is believed to be long enough to unveil
any inherent statistical and economic relationship between stock returns and inflation. For instance, for the index level time series
dimension, we have about one hundred twenty (120) observations whereas the asymptotic properties for most of the time series test
statistics require about fifty (50) observations. Nonetheless, we also consider a smaller data span involving quarterly frequency to
validate our proposed approach as being robust to both small and long data spans. For the price level datasets, we are able to cover
four hundred and thirty (430) firms with balanced datasets over the data range covered in the study (i.e. 2009M02 to 2019M04),
thus, leading to about fifty-two thousand eight hundred and nighty (52,890) observations. The stock price data is obtained from the
Bloomberg terminal while the consumer price inflation series is obtained from the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis - FRED Economic
data (see https://fred.stlouisfed.org/). The consumer price inflation series used for the main analyses captures all Items in U.S. City
and is seasonally adjusted. For robustness, we use all-item producer price inflation obtained from the same source.

4
See for example studies like Barnes et al. (1999), Ahmed & Cardinale (2005) and Li et al. (2010) which report changing stock returns nexus with
inflation at different inflationary regimes.

3
A.A. Salisu, et al. Finance Research Letters xxx (xxxx) xxxx

Table 1
Summary statistics.
Variable Panel data (Price level data) Time series data (Index level data)

Mean Std. Dev. Mean Std. Dev.


rt 1.359 7.991 0.996 3.797
πt 0.150 0.199 `0.150 0.200
NT 52,890 52,890 123 123
N 430 430 – –
T 123 123 123 123

Note: rt = stock returns; πt = consumer price inflation rate. N and T denote the number of cross-sections and periods respectively while NT is the
total number of observations.

4. Results

The first table highlights some descriptive statistics using both price level and index level data (see Table 1). We find that the
index level data tends to under-estimate the average stock returns as well as the associated risks given the higher magnitudes for the
price level data both for the mean and standard deviation values. Thereafter, we proceed to estimation based on the methodology
adopted in this study involving both time series and panel data techniques. The main analyses for both the index level and price level
data and consequently time series and panel data techniques respectively are partitioned into two: (i) The analyses with the as-
sumption of homogenous slope and (ii) The analyses with the assumption of heterogeneous slope. In the first case, we employ the
least squares estimator which is valid for stationary series. We are conscious of this requirement and that explains why the variables
are specified in such a way as to circumvent the problem of unit root. In any case, that is the standard way of specifying the relevant
variables for the purpose of inflation hedging (see Arnold and Auer, 2015 for a review). Nonetheless, we provide the results for both
time series and panel unit root and stationarity tests for confirmation (see Tables 2 and 3 for time series and panel data respectively).
Several unit root and stationarity tests are conducted and the outcome validates our assumption of stationarity or absence of unit root
in both series regardless of the choice of unit root test. Consequently, the analysis of the first case with homogenous assumption is
conducted and the results are presented in Table 4. Under this case, we find that estimating with the price level data unveils the
inflation hedging potential of US stock returns which appears to be suppressed when the index level data is used (see Table 4). The
outcome remains the same even after controlling for the real level of economic activities (see the second segment of the results in
Table 4).
In the second case, we relax the assumption of homogeneity and therefore allow for some level of heterogeneity in the slope
coefficient. This is done in line with Eqs. (3) to (7) which involve a threshold analysis. The intuition behind the choice of this
approach is underscored by the fact that the threshold model describes the jumping character or structural break in the relationship
between variables and is popular both in nonlinear time series and panel data (see Wang, 2015). The assumption of heterogeneity for
inflation hedging has been empirically validated in the literature although not from the perspective of stock returns-inflation hedging
(see Salisu and Adediran, 2019 for a review). In the implementation of a threshold model, three variables are required namely, the
dependent variable, which is stock returns in this case, the regime-dependent variable, which is inflation, and the threshold variable
(using inflation and real level of economic activity distinctly for robustness). The idea of using the threshold variable is to test
whether the response of stock returns to movement in inflation is regime dependent. This allows us to capture any inherent het-
erogeneity, nonlinearity or time-variation in the stock returns-inflation nexus.
The results for this second case that accounts for heterogeneity are presented in Tables 5 and 6. The null hypothesis for a single
panel threshold effect is rejected justifying the presence of some level of heterogeneity in the panel regression model involving the
price level data. However, the same conclusion cannot be extended to the threshold analyses using the index level data as the test for
the optimal threshold returns a linear model without any threshold effect. It is therefore not surprising that the coefficients are not
significant at virtually all the thresholds for the index level data. Meanwhile, a cursory look at the panel threshold model for the price

Table 2
Time series unit root and stationarity tests at level.
Variable ADF PP KPSS

a b a b a b
rt −12.071⁎⁎⁎[0] −12.104⁎⁎⁎ [0] −12.446⁎⁎⁎(7) −12.713⁎⁎⁎(8) 0.108(10) 0.051(11)
πt −7.957⁎⁎⁎[0] −7.924⁎⁎⁎[0] −7.904⁎⁎⁎(3) −7.867⁎⁎⁎(3) 0.158 (3) 0.124 (3)
Obs 123 123 123 123 123 123

Note: rt = stock returns; πt = consumer price inflation rate. ADF = Augmented Dickey Fuller unit root test; PP = Philips Perron unit root test;
KPSS = Kwiatkowski-Phillips-Schmidt-Shin stationarity test. ‘a’ and ‘b’ denote the statistics for the test equations with intercept only and intercept
and trend respectively. The ADF and PP are unit root tests with the null hypothesis of unit root while the KPSS is a stationarity test with the null
hypothesis of stationarity. The value in [] gives the optimal lag selected using the Schwartz Information Criterion while the value in () is for the
Newey-West bandwidth selected based on Bartlett Kernel. *** is for statistical significance at the 1 percent level. Obs is the total number of
observations.

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A.A. Salisu, et al. Finance Research Letters xxx (xxxx) xxxx

Table 3
Panel unit root and stationarity tests at level.
Variable LLC IPS Hadri Z-Stat

a b a b a b
rt –2.2e+02⁎⁎⁎ [1] –2.4e+02⁎⁎⁎[1] –2.2e+02⁎⁎⁎[1] –2.2e+0⁎⁎⁎[1] 3.981⁎⁎⁎ –5.8442
πt –1.8e+02⁎⁎⁎[0] –2.0e+02⁎⁎⁎ [0] –1.6e+02⁎⁎⁎ [0] –1.5e+02⁎⁎⁎ [0] 4.873⁎⁎⁎ –23.184
NT 52,890 52,890 52,890 52,890 52,890 52,890
N 430 430 430 430 430 430
T 123 123 123 123 123 123

Note: rt = stock returns; πt = consumer price inflation rate. ‘ LLC is the Levin et al. (2002) test; IPS is the Im et al. (1997) test; Hadri Z-Stat is the
Hadri (2000) test. The LLC and IPS are unit root tests with the null hypothesis of unit root while the Hadri Z-Stat is a stationarity test with the null
hypothesis of stationarity. ‘a’ and ‘b’ denote the statistics for the test equations with intercept only and intercept and trend respectively. The value in
[] gives the optimal lag selected using the Akaike Information Criterion. *** is for statistical significance at the 1 percent level. N and T denote the
number of cross-sections and periods respectively while NT is the total number of observations.

Table 4
Index level data versus Price level data [Homogenous assumption].
Variable Main model Extended model

Panel data (Price level data) Time series data (Index level Panel data (Price level data) Time series data (Index level
data) data)
πt 0.756*** (0.174) 2.358 (1.711) 0.714*** (0.174) 2.340 (1.716)
Included control variables NO NO YES YES
Constant 1.246*** 0.641 1.363*** 0.692
(0.0436) (0.427) (0.0447) (0.440)
NT 52,890 123 52,890 123
N 430 – 430 –
T 123 123 123 123

Note: Index level data is the Aggregate S&P 500 index; Price level data denotes the constituent prices of the individual stocks of the S&P 500 index.
πt = consumer price inflation rate. Standard errors are in parentheses – (); *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1. N and T denote the number of cross-
sections and periods respectively while NT is the total number of observations.

Table 5
Index level data versus Price level data [Heterogeneous slope assumption].
Variable Panel data (Price level data) Time series data (Index level data)

Single Threshold Double Threshold Triple Threshold Single Threshold Double Threshold Triple Threshold
t _0 5.993*** (0.293) 5.695*** (0.292) 5.738*** (0.292) 7.591*** (2.830) 4.222 (4.256) 4.222 (4.218)
t _1 −1.277*** (0.196) −7.323*** (0.336) −4.823*** (0.374) 6.183 (4.900) −17.37 (13.61) −17.37 (13.49)
t _2 0.532** (0.212) −15.24*** (0.627) 6.183 (4.830) −19.12 (24.57)
t _3 0.588*** (0.211) −0.513 (6.603)
Threshold effect test 494.28***

NT 52,890 52,890 52,890 123 123 123


N 430 430 430
T 123 123 123 123 123 123

Note: Same as Table 4.

Table 6
Index level data versus Price level data [Heterogeneous slope assumption] with control variables.
Variable Panel data (Price level data) Time series data (Index level data)

Single Threshold Double Threshold Triple Threshold Single Threshold Double Threshold Triple Threshold
t _0 6.549*** (0.295) 6.212*** (0.294) 6.190*** (0.293) 7.917*** (2.853) 4.842 (4.321) 4.690 (4.305)
t _1 −1.573*** (0.197) −7.329*** (0.335) −5.077*** (0.374) 6.041 (4.905) −17.45 (13.62) −17.43 (13.57)
t _2 0.186 (0.213) −14.46*** (0.629) 6.054 (4.837) −17.07 (26.49)
t _3 0.276 (0.213) 0.474 (6.538)
Threshold effect 602.49***
NT 52,890 52,890 52,890 123 123 123
N 430 430 430 – – –
T 123 123 123 123 123 123

Note: Same as Table 4.

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level data indicates statistically significant coefficients at virtually all the considered thresholds. This simply suggests that analysing
the inflation hedging potential of US stock returns will require aggregating the estimates rather than estimating the aggregates in
order to tease out the underlying dynamics between the two variables. Therefore, it may not be out of place to assume that the use of
the index level data in the literature may be largely responsible for the conclusion of non-existence of inflation hedge for US stock
returns.

4.1. Additional results based on alternative measures of inflation and cointegration tests

Recall that the main analyses involve the use of all-item consumer price inflation. To validate the outcome of these analyses, we
employ an alternative measure of inflation using the producer price inflation. The latter deals with the business sector of the economy
unlike the consumer price inflation which covers the household sector. This is premised on the fact that the US is highly industrialized
with a vibrant real sector and therefore the producer price inflation (PPI hereafter) can also serve as a good measure of macro-
economic stability. In addition, we extend the robustness checks to include long run analyses following the tradition in the literature
which suggests the use of cointegration technique when analysing the inflation hedging potential of assets including stocks. Thus, the
Bounds cointegration test of Pesaran et al. (2001) is used for time series (index level) data while the Pedroni (1999, 2004) panel
cointegration test is employed for the price level (panel) data.5
All the analyses previously conducted are also replicated for PPI and we find the results for the index level data to be consistent,
irrespective of the inflation measure. Similarly observable from the long run cointegration results is that the inflation hedging
potential of US stocks is only realized at a longer time dimension. However, the long run inflation hedge of US stocks, which is
undermined for a short data span, in the case of index level data, is well pronounced for the price level data and robust to firm level
effect. This further reinforces the need to use price level data particularly when confronted with short time series dimension.

5. Conclusion

This study examines whether it matters to choose the price level data over the index level data when analysing the inflation
hedging potential of US stock returns. Several robustness tests are conducted ranging from alternative measures of inflation, data
frequencies to alternative methodologies. Our analyses suggest that the ability of the US stock returns to serve as a good hedge against
inflation becomes evident when the price level data, which in a way allows for some level heterogeneity is used. Ignoring same in the
estimation process may lead to wrong conclusions. The results leading to these outcomes are robustness to alternative measures of
inflation, data frequencies to alternative methodologies. More importantly, our approach of using the price level data is favoured
even at a smaller data span contrary to the findings in the literature which assume that a longer data span will be required to validate
the generalized Fisher hypothesis.

Supplementary materials

Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.frl.2019.101384.

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5
To ensure that the required word limit for the journal is maintained, the additional results using the PPI measure of inflation and the coin-
tegration analyses are not reported but are available upon request.

6
A.A. Salisu, et al. Finance Research Letters xxx (xxxx) xxxx

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