Return and volatility linkages between oil prices and the Lebanese stock market in crisis periods

•We examine return and volatility linkages between oil prices and the Lebanese stock market.•For the whole period, we find weak unidirectional return and volatility transmissions running from oil prices.•The financial crisis intensified the interrelationship.

This paper examines the return and volatility linkages between oil prices and the Lebanese stock market by applying the newly developed VAR-GARCH (Vector Autoregressive-Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity) model to weekly data from 30 January 1998 to 30 May 2014. To better understand the impact of the global financial crisis, we divide the data into three sub-periods: the pre-crisis period (02 February 1998–28 December 2007), the crisis period (02 January 2008–30 June 2009), and the post-crisis period (01 July 2009–30 May 2014). Contrary to previous studies showing the two-way transmission of return and volatility from oil prices to the stock markets of oil-exporting countries, our empirical results for the whole period reveal weak unidirectional return and volatility transmissions from oil prices to the Lebanese stock market. While the interrelationship between oil prices and Lebanese stocks increased during the crisis, it eased significantly in the post-crisis period. Our empirical results are important for policymakers involved in shock prevention and for portfolio managers seeking optimal portfolio allocation.