IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/econpa/v40y2021i3p173-193.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

COVID‐19 Infections and the Performance of the Stock Market: An Empirical Analysis for Australia

Author

Listed:
  • Markus Brueckner
  • Joaquin Vespignani

Abstract

Using daily data, we estimate a vector autoregression model to characterise the dynamic relationship between COVID‐19 infections in Australia and the performance of the Australian stock market, specifically the ASX‐200. Impulse response functions show that COVID‐19 infections in Australia have a significant positive effect on the performance of the stock market: a one standard deviation increase in new registered cases of COVID‐19 infections in Australia increases the daily growth rate of the ASX‐200 by around half a percentage point. This result is robust to alternative lag selections of the VAR model as suggested by alternative information criteria, including in the model control variables for stock market volatility, that is the ASX‐200 VIX; the USD‐AUD exchange rate and the international oil price; news by the World Health Organization regarding a COVID‐19 pandemic and public health emergency; and the government‐imposed shutdown of parts of the Australian economy. We also present estimates of the dynamic relationship between the daily growth rate of the Dow Jones and daily new cases of COVID‐19 infections in the United States. The US data show, similar to the Australian data, that there is a significant positive effect of COVID‐19 infections on the performance of the stock market.

Suggested Citation

  • Markus Brueckner & Joaquin Vespignani, 2021. "COVID‐19 Infections and the Performance of the Stock Market: An Empirical Analysis for Australia," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 40(3), pages 173-193, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:econpa:v:40:y:2021:i:3:p:173-193
    DOI: 10.1111/1759-3441.12318
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1759-3441.12318
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1759-3441.12318?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Valerie A. Ramey, 2011. "Identifying Government Spending Shocks: It's all in the Timing," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(1), pages 1-50.
    2. R. Andres Castaneda Aguilar & Tony H. M. J. Fujs & Dean M. Jolliffe & Christoph Lakner & Daniel Gerszon Mahler & Minh C. Nguyen & Marta Schoch & David L. Vargas Mogollon & Martha C. Viveros Mendoza & , 2020. "September 2020 PovcalNet Update: What's New," Global Poverty Monitoring Technical Note Series 14, The World Bank.
    3. Editors, 2020. "Software updates," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 20(4), pages 1028-1030, December.
    4. Scott R. Baker & Nicholas Bloom & Steven J. Davis & Stephen J. Terry, 2020. "COVID-Induced Economic Uncertainty," NBER Working Papers 26983, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Editors, 2020. "Software updates," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 20(2), pages 504-504, June.
    6. Editors, 2020. "Software updates," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 20(3), pages 757-758, September.
    7. Caggiano, Giovanni & Castelnuovo, Efrem & Kima, Richard, 2020. "The global effects of Covid-19-induced uncertainty," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 194(C).
    8. Cristiana Benedetti-Fasil & Petr Sedláček & Vincent Sterk, 2022. "Startups and employment following the COVID-19 pandemic: a calculator," Economic Policy, CEPR;CES;MSH, vol. 37(111), pages 507-533.
    9. Warwick McKibbin & Roshen Fernando, 2021. "The Global Macroeconomic Impacts of COVID-19: Seven Scenarios," Asian Economic Papers, MIT Press, vol. 20(2), pages 1-30, Summer.
    10. Albert Lee & Amelia Lo & Queenie Li & Vera Keung & Amy Kwong, 2020. "Health Promoting Schools: An Update," Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, Springer, vol. 18(5), pages 605-623, October.
    11. J. Vernon Henderson & Adam Storeygard & David N. Weil, 2012. "Measuring Economic Growth from Outer Space," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(2), pages 994-1028, April.
    12. Editors, 2020. "Software updates," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 20(1), pages 250-251, March.
    13. Valerie A. Ramey & Sarah Zubairy, 2018. "Government Spending Multipliers in Good Times and in Bad: Evidence from US Historical Data," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 126(2), pages 850-901.
    14. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2020_011 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kamal, Javed Bin & Wohar, Mark, 2023. "Heterogenous responses of stock markets to covid related news and sentiments: Evidence from the 1st year of pandemic," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 173(C), pages 68-85.
    2. Greta Keliuotyte-Staniuleniene & Julius Kviklis, 2021. "Stock Market Reactions during Different Phases of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Cases of Italy and Spain," Economies, MDPI, vol. 10(1), pages 1-32, December.
    3. Swarnil Roy & Sk. Riad Arefin & Avijit Mallik, 2023. "How Volatility and Herding of the Stock Markets in the Oceania Region Influence Investors and Policymakers: A Sector-Wise Exploration in Pre and Post-COVID Period," International Journal of Economics and Finance, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 15(1), pages 1-24, January.
    4. Samet Gunay & Walid Bakry & Somar Al-Mohamad, 2021. "The Australian Stock Market’s Reaction to the First Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Black Summer Bushfires: A Sectoral Analysis," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 14(4), pages 1-19, April.
    5. Ștefan Cristian Gherghina & Daniel Ștefan Armeanu & Camelia Cătălina Joldeș, 2021. "COVID-19 Pandemic and Romanian Stock Market Volatility: A GARCH Approach," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 14(8), pages 1-29, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Simionescu, Mihaela & Raišienė, Agota Giedrė, 2021. "A bridge between sentiment indicators: What does Google Trends tell us about COVID-19 pandemic and employment expectations in the EU new member states?," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).
    2. Heather Anderson & Giovanni Caggiano & Farshid Vahid & Benjamin Wong, 2020. "Sectoral Employment Dynamics in Australia and the COVID‐19 Pandemic," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 53(3), pages 402-414, September.
    3. Ines Abdelkafi & Sahar Loukil & YossraBen Romdhane, 2023. "Economic Uncertainty During COVID-19 Pandemic in Latin America and Asia," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 14(2), pages 1582-1601, June.
    4. Hyeongwoo Kim, 2018. "Fiscal Policy, Wages, and Jobs in the U.S," Auburn Economics Working Paper Series auwp2018-02, Department of Economics, Auburn University.
    5. Rüth, Sebastian K., 2018. "Fiscal stimulus and systematic monetary policy: Postwar evidence for the United States," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 173(C), pages 92-96.
    6. Miescu, Mirela & Rossi, Raffaele, 2021. "COVID-19-induced shocks and uncertainty," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    7. Yanguas Parra, Paola & Hauenstein, Christian & Oei, Pao-Yu, 2021. "The death valley of coal – Modelling COVID-19 recovery scenarios for steam coal markets," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 288(C).
    8. Andrea Boitani & Salvatore Perdichizzi & Chiara Punzo, 2022. "Nonlinearities and expenditure multipliers in the Eurozone [Tales of fiscal adjustment]," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 31(2), pages 552-575.
    9. Jianchun Fang & Giray Gozgor & Sercan Pekel, 2020. "Where You Export Matters: Measuring Uncertainty in Turkey's Export Markets," CESifo Working Paper Series 8404, CESifo.
    10. Francois de Soyres & Ana Maria Santacreu & Henry L. Young, 2023. "Demand-Supply Imbalance during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Role of Fiscal Policy," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 105(1), pages 21-50, January.
    11. Brum, Matias & De Rosa, Mauricio, 2021. "Too little but not too late: nowcasting poverty and cash transfers’ incidence during COVID-19’s crisis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    12. Mathias Klein & Ludger Linnemann, 2019. "Macroeconomic Effects of Government Spending: The Great Recession was (Really) Different," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 51(5), pages 1237-1264, August.
    13. Ji, Yangyang & Xiao, Wei, 2016. "Government spending multipliers and the zero lower bound," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 87-100.
    14. Matías Brum & Mauricio de Rosa, 2020. "Too little but not too late. Nowcasting poverty and cash transfers' incidence in Uruguay during COVID-19's crisis," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 20-09, Instituto de Economía - IECON.
    15. Martin Geiger & Marios Zachariadis, 2019. "Assessing Expectations as a Monetary/Fiscal State-Dependent Phenomenon," University of Cyprus Working Papers in Economics 01-2019, University of Cyprus Department of Economics.
    16. Britta Gehrke & Brigitte Hochmuth, 2021. "Counteracting Unemployment in Crises: Non‐Linear Effects of Short‐Time Work Policy," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 123(1), pages 144-183, January.
    17. Ethan Ilzetzki, 2023. "Learning by necessity: Government demand, capacity constraints, and productivity growth," Discussion Papers 2305, Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM).
    18. Bredemeier, Christian & Juessen, Falko & Schabert, Andreas, 2015. "Fiscal Policy, Interest Rate Spreads, and the Zero Lower Bound," IZA Discussion Papers 8993, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    19. Gergely Ganics & Atsushi Inoue & Barbara Rossi, 2021. "Confidence Intervals for Bias and Size Distortion in IV and Local Projections-IV Models," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(1), pages 307-324, January.
    20. Giovanni Angelini & Giovanni Caggiano & Efrem Castelnuovo & Luca Fanelli, 2023. "Are Fiscal Multipliers Estimated with Proxy‐SVARs Robust?," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 85(1), pages 95-122, February.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • I00 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - General - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:econpa:v:40:y:2021:i:3:p:173-193. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/esausea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.