IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/28356.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Do Global Pandemics Matter for Stock Prices? Lessons from the 1918 Spanish Flu

Author

Listed:
  • Marco Del Angel
  • Caroline Fohlin
  • Marc D. Weidenmier

Abstract

We study the impact of the 1918 Spanish Flu on U.S. stock prices. We use the death rate to control for the impact of the global pandemic and war news reported in the New York Times to capture the positive effects of the end of World War I on stock prices. Using a new weekly hand collected NYSE stock price index, we show that there is a -.73 correlation between the aggregate stock market and the death rate. Furthermore, vector autoregressions demonstrate that the death rate can explain up to 24 percent of the forecast error variance in the aggregate stock index from September 1918 until the end of the pandemic in March 1920. We also find that the flu had a significant, but varied impact on nine NYSE sectors. The empirical analysis indicates that pandemics can matter big time for stock prices.

Suggested Citation

  • Marco Del Angel & Caroline Fohlin & Marc D. Weidenmier, 2021. "Do Global Pandemics Matter for Stock Prices? Lessons from the 1918 Spanish Flu," NBER Working Papers 28356, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28356
    Note: AP DAE EH
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w28356.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert J. Barro & José F. Ursúa & Joanna Weng, 2020. "The Coronavirus and the Great Influenza Pandemic: Lessons from the “Spanish Flu” for the Coronavirus’s Potential Effects on Mortality and Economic Activity," NBER Working Papers 26866, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Schwert, G William, 1990. "Stock Returns and Real Activity: A Century of Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(4), pages 1237-1257, September.
    3. Fama, Eugene F, 1990. "Stock Returns, Expected Returns, and Real Activity," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(4), pages 1089-1108, September.
    4. repec:aei:rpaper:1008560098 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Robert J. Barro & José F. Ursua & Joanna Weng, 2020. "The Coronavirus and the Great Influenza Epidemic - Lessons from the "Spanish Flu" for the Coronavirus's Potential Effects on Mortality and Economic Activity," CESifo Working Paper Series 8166, CESifo.
    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. Joe Piacentini & Harley Frazis & Peter B. Meyer & Michael Schultz & Leo Sveikauskas, 2022. "The Impact of COVID-19 on Labor Markets and Inequality," Economic Working Papers 551, Bureau of Labor Statistics.
    2. Bampinas, Georgios & Panagiotidis, Theodore, 2023. "How would the war and the pandemic affect the stock and cryptocurrency cross-market linkages?," MPRA Paper 117094, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    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. Johannes A. Skjeltorp & Bernt Arne Ødegaard, 2009. "The information content of market liquidity: An empirical analysis of liquidity at the Oslo Stock Exchange?," Working Paper 2009/26, Norges Bank.
    2. Christoffersen, Peter & Ghysels, Eric & Swanson, Norman R., 2002. "Let's get "real" about using economic data," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 343-360, August.
    3. Hibbs, Douglas A, Jr, 2000. "Bread and Peace Voting in U.S. Presidential Elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 104(1-2), pages 149-180, July.
    4. Louis-Philippe Beland & Abel Brodeur & Taylor Wright, 2020. "COVID-19, Stay-at-Home Orders and Employment: Evidence from CPS Data," Carleton Economic Papers 20-04, Carleton University, Department of Economics, revised 19 May 2020.
    5. Houštecká, Anna & Koh, Dongya & Santaeulàlia-Llopis, Raül, 2021. "Contagion at work: Occupations, industries and human contact," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    6. John Gathergood & Fabian Gunzinger & Benedict Guttman-Kenney & Edika Quispe-Torreblanca & Neil Stewart, 2020. "Levelling Down and the COVID-19 Lockdowns: Uneven Regional Recovery in UK Consumer Spending," Papers 2012.09336, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2020.
    7. Feras A. Batarseh & Munisamy Gopinath & Anderson Monken, 2020. "Artificial Intelligence Methods for Evaluating Global Trade Flows," International Finance Discussion Papers 1296, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    8. Ozlem Goktas & Aycan Hepsag, 2011. "Do stock returns lead real economic activity? Evidence from seasonal cointegration analysis," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 31(3), pages 2117-2127.
    9. Mahata, Ajit & Rai, Anish & Nurujjaman, Md. & Prakash, Om, 2021. "Modeling and analysis of the effect of COVID-19 on the stock price: V and L-shape recovery," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 574(C).
    10. Piotr Fiszeder & Sebastian Rowinski, 2012. "Modeling relations between selected macroeconomic processes and the Warsaw Stock Exchange index," Ekonomia i Prawo, Uniwersytet Mikolaja Kopernika, vol. 10(3), pages 153-167, September.
    11. Qureshi, Fiza & Khan, Habib Hussain & Rehman, Ijaz Ur & Ghafoor, Abdul & Qureshi, Saba, 2019. "Mutual fund flows and investors’ expectations in BRICS economies: Implications for international diversification," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 130-150.
    12. Sagarika Mishra & Harminder Singh, 2012. "Do macro-economic variables explain stock-market returns? Evidence using a semi-parametric approach," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 13(2), pages 115-127, April.
    13. Lamont, Owen A., 2001. "Economic tracking portfolios," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 105(1), pages 161-184, November.
    14. Domian, Dale L. & Louton, David A., 1997. "A threshold autoregressive analysis of stock returns and real economic activity," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 167-179.
    15. Mili, Mehdi & Sahut, Jean-Michel & Teulon, Frédéric, 2012. "Non linear and asymmetric linkages between real growth in the Euro area and global financial market conditions: New evidence," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 734-741.
    16. Jorgensen, Bjorn & Li, Jing & Sadka, Gil, 2012. "Earnings dispersion and aggregate stock returns," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 1-20.
    17. Kent Hargis & William F. Maloney, 1997. "Emerging Equity Markets: Are They For Real?," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 20(2), pages 243-262, June.
    18. Alexander Chudik & M. Hashem Pesaran & Alessandro Rebucci, 2020. "Voluntary and Mandatory Social Distancing: Evidence on COVID-19 Exposure Rates from Chinese Provinces and Selected Countries," Globalization Institute Working Papers 382, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    19. Jon Kerr & Gil Sadka & Ronnie Sadka, 2020. "Illiquidity and Price Informativeness," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(1), pages 334-351, January.
    20. Gil Sadka, 2007. "Understanding Stock Price Volatility: The Role of Earnings," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(1), pages 199-228, March.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G1 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets
    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
    • N2 - Economic History - - Financial Markets and Institutions

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:28356. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.