Does the SDR stabilize investing in commodities?

This paper investigates the potential stabilizing power of the Special Drawing Rights (SDR) on global commodity markets. Using the VAR-BEKK-GRACH, we investigate the impacts of representative shocks from financial market, real economy and foreign exchange market on 25 commodities. Through comparing the volatility spillover on the US dollar-based and SDR-based commodity prices, we find that SDR pricing plays a significant role in stabilizing the prices volatility of energy, metal and agricultural commodities in response to shocks from S&P 500, Baltic Dry Index (BDI) and USDX, respectively. The stability effect on commodity prices varies across specific shocks and commodity varieties. More importantly, by conducting a hedging portfolio exercise in commodity market we show a dominant hedging effectiveness by SDR-denominated bonds to commodities investment compared with the US notes in all cases, except for metals facing S&P 500 shock. The results suggest an effective technique to hedge against commodity market volatilities by combining the SDR-denominated instrument.