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COVID-19 Pandemic: Stock Markets Reaction to the Mortality Rates and Lockdown Policies

Received: 8 September 2021    Accepted: 26 September 2021    Published: 29 September 2021
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Abstract

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is disrupting the world as we knew it, with a heavy toll on economic activities and the structure of politics. Governments, media websites, and research institutions update information about the changes in the COVID-19 epidemic every day. The most intuitive information may be the changes in the number of confirmed cases and deaths, which shape investors’ sentiments and confidence in the financial markets. The goal of this study is to investigate the impact of new mortality rates of COVID-19 on the UK and US stock markets over the period January 1 – September 30, 2020. We employed a simple regression model to examine whether new mortality rates contain information beyond the lagged market volatility. By constructing a lockdown dummy variable, we further control for the impact of government lockdown policies on market volatility in our model. Our findings show that new mortality rates caused by COVID-19 pandemic have significant positive impact on volatility of the UK and the US stock markets. We also find that the implementation of lockdown policies provided by the governments reduced the effects of new mortality rates on stock market volatility. In addition, our results are robust to other measurements of volatility. Together our findings suggest that new mortality rates do matter for stock market volatility of these two markets, and lockdown policies mitigate market volatile caused by new mortality rates.

Published in International Journal of Economics, Finance and Management Sciences (Volume 9, Issue 5)
DOI 10.11648/j.ijefm.20210905.12
Page(s) 178-182
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

COVID-19 Pandemic, Stock Market Volatility, Mortality Rates

References
[1] Al-Awadhi, A. M., Al-Saifi, K., Al-Awadhi, A., Alhamadi, S., 2020. Death and contagious infectious diseases: Impact of the COVID-19 virus on stock market returns. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, 100326.
[2] Yilmazkuday, H., 2020. COVID-19 effects on the s&p 500 index. Available at SSRN 3555433.
[3] Fernandes, N., 2020. Economic effects of coronavirus outbreak (COVID-19) on the world economy. Available at SSRN 3557504.
[4] Barua, S., 2020. Understanding Coronanomics: The economic implications of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. SSRN Electronic Journal https://doi org/10/ggq92n.
[5] Maital, S., Barzani, E., 2020. The Global Economic Impact of COVID-19: A Summary of Research. Samuel Neaman Institute for National Policy Research.
[6] Ashraf, B. N., 2020. Stock markets’ reaction to COVID-19: cases or fatalities? Research in International Business and Finance, 101249.
[7] Onali, E., 2020. COVID-19 and stock market volatility. Available at SSRN 3571453.
[8] Baker, S. R., Bloom, N., Davis, S. J., Kost, K., Sammon, M., Viratyosin, T., 2020. The unprecedented stock market reaction to COVID-19. The Review of Asset Pricing Studies.
[9] Heber, G., Lunde, A., Shephard, N., Sheppard, K., 2009. OMI’s realized library, version 0.3. Oxford-Man Institute, University of Oxford.
[10] Baek, S., Mohanty, S. K., & Mina, G., 2020. COVID-19 and Stock Market Volatility: An Industry Level Analysis. Finance Research Letters, 101748.
[11] Phan, D. H. B., Narayan, P. K., 2020. Country responses and the reaction of the stock market to COVID-19—A preliminary exposition. Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, 56, 2138-2150.
[12] Zolkipli, M. F., 2020. Data-driven dynamic clustering framework for mitigating the adverse economic impact of COVID-19 lockdown practices. Sustainable Cities and Society, 62, 102372.
[13] Bonaccorsi, G., Pierri, F., Cinelli, M., Flori, A., Galeazzi, A., Porcelli, F., Pammolli, F., 2020. Economic and social consequences of human mobility restrictions under COVID-19. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117, 15530-15535.
[14] Rahman, M. A., Zaman, N., Asyhari, A. T., Al-Turjman, F., Bhuiyan, M. Z. A., Zolkipli, M. F., 2020. Data-driven dynamic clustering framework for mitigating the adverse economic impact of Covid-19 lockdown practices. Sustainable Cities and Society, 62, 102372.
[15] Narayan, P. K., Phan, D. H. B., Liu, G., 2020. COVID-19 lockdowns, stimulus packages, travel bans, and stock returns. Finance Research Letters. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2020.101732.
Cite This Article
  • APA Style

    Yixiu Zhao, Min Hua. (2021). COVID-19 Pandemic: Stock Markets Reaction to the Mortality Rates and Lockdown Policies. International Journal of Economics, Finance and Management Sciences, 9(5), 178-182. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijefm.20210905.12

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    ACS Style

    Yixiu Zhao; Min Hua. COVID-19 Pandemic: Stock Markets Reaction to the Mortality Rates and Lockdown Policies. Int. J. Econ. Finance Manag. Sci. 2021, 9(5), 178-182. doi: 10.11648/j.ijefm.20210905.12

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    AMA Style

    Yixiu Zhao, Min Hua. COVID-19 Pandemic: Stock Markets Reaction to the Mortality Rates and Lockdown Policies. Int J Econ Finance Manag Sci. 2021;9(5):178-182. doi: 10.11648/j.ijefm.20210905.12

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  • @article{10.11648/j.ijefm.20210905.12,
      author = {Yixiu Zhao and Min Hua},
      title = {COVID-19 Pandemic: Stock Markets Reaction to the Mortality Rates and Lockdown Policies},
      journal = {International Journal of Economics, Finance and Management Sciences},
      volume = {9},
      number = {5},
      pages = {178-182},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ijefm.20210905.12},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijefm.20210905.12},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijefm.20210905.12},
      abstract = {The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is disrupting the world as we knew it, with a heavy toll on economic activities and the structure of politics. Governments, media websites, and research institutions update information about the changes in the COVID-19 epidemic every day. The most intuitive information may be the changes in the number of confirmed cases and deaths, which shape investors’ sentiments and confidence in the financial markets. The goal of this study is to investigate the impact of new mortality rates of COVID-19 on the UK and US stock markets over the period January 1 – September 30, 2020. We employed a simple regression model to examine whether new mortality rates contain information beyond the lagged market volatility. By constructing a lockdown dummy variable, we further control for the impact of government lockdown policies on market volatility in our model. Our findings show that new mortality rates caused by COVID-19 pandemic have significant positive impact on volatility of the UK and the US stock markets. We also find that the implementation of lockdown policies provided by the governments reduced the effects of new mortality rates on stock market volatility. In addition, our results are robust to other measurements of volatility. Together our findings suggest that new mortality rates do matter for stock market volatility of these two markets, and lockdown policies mitigate market volatile caused by new mortality rates.},
     year = {2021}
    }
    

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    AU  - Yixiu Zhao
    AU  - Min Hua
    Y1  - 2021/09/29
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    DO  - 10.11648/j.ijefm.20210905.12
    T2  - International Journal of Economics, Finance and Management Sciences
    JF  - International Journal of Economics, Finance and Management Sciences
    JO  - International Journal of Economics, Finance and Management Sciences
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    PB  - Science Publishing Group
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    AB  - The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is disrupting the world as we knew it, with a heavy toll on economic activities and the structure of politics. Governments, media websites, and research institutions update information about the changes in the COVID-19 epidemic every day. The most intuitive information may be the changes in the number of confirmed cases and deaths, which shape investors’ sentiments and confidence in the financial markets. The goal of this study is to investigate the impact of new mortality rates of COVID-19 on the UK and US stock markets over the period January 1 – September 30, 2020. We employed a simple regression model to examine whether new mortality rates contain information beyond the lagged market volatility. By constructing a lockdown dummy variable, we further control for the impact of government lockdown policies on market volatility in our model. Our findings show that new mortality rates caused by COVID-19 pandemic have significant positive impact on volatility of the UK and the US stock markets. We also find that the implementation of lockdown policies provided by the governments reduced the effects of new mortality rates on stock market volatility. In addition, our results are robust to other measurements of volatility. Together our findings suggest that new mortality rates do matter for stock market volatility of these two markets, and lockdown policies mitigate market volatile caused by new mortality rates.
    VL  - 9
    IS  - 5
    ER  - 

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Author Information
  • School of Economics and Management, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin, China

  • Faculty of Professional Finance & Accountancy, Shanghai Business School, Shanghai, China

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