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This study undertakes a comprehensive investigation into the far-reaching repercussions of Covid-19 stimulus packages and containment policies on stock returns, meticulously examining a diverse array of 14 distinct markets.

This study employed the Panel SVAR model to analyze the relationships between various policies and stock market performance during the Covid-19 outbreak. The sample comprises 5432 daily observations spanning from December 2020 to January 2022 for the 14 selected markets, with missing data excluded.

The findings reveal three consistent impacts across all 14 markets. Firstly, stock returns immediately reversed and decreased within a day when Governments tightened containment policies. Secondly, economic stimulus packages led to a fall in stock returns. Thirdly, an increasing death rate caused the stock return to decrease in the following two days. These findings are supported by the uniform impulse responses in all three shocks, including common, composite and idiosyncratic shocks. Furthermore, all inverse root tests satisfy the stability conditions, indicating the stability and reliability of Panel SVAR estimations.

One vital implication is that all government decisions and measures taken against the shock of Covid-19 must consider economic impacts to avoid unnecessary financial losses and support the effective functioning of stock markets during similar shocks. Secondly, investors should view the decline in stock returns due to Covid-19 effects as temporary, resulting from anxiety about the outbreak. The study highlights the importance of monitoring the impact of policies on financial markets and the broader economy during crises. Overall, these insights can prove helpful for investment decisions and policymaking during future crises.

This study constitutes a noteworthy addition to the literature on behavioural finance and the efficient market hypothesis, offering a meticulous analysis of the multifaceted repercussions of Covid-19 on market interactions. In particular, it unveils the magnitude, duration and intricate patterns of market volatilities linked to significant shock events, encompassing a comprehensive dataset spanning 14 distinct markets.

This paper examines correlations of the underlying structural shocks and the degree of synchronization in the impulse responses of output, inflation and trade to a one standard deviation shock to non-oil commodities price index and exchange rates within the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ) countries from 1990q1 to 2020q1.

This paper uses the structural vector autoregressive model to isolate the underlying structural shocks and compares them with the West African Monetary Union (WAEMU) countries.

Findings from the study suggest that correlations of underlying structural shocks are more profound in the WAEMU than in the WAMZ. Impulse responses of output to price and exchange rate shocks are more symmetric in the WAEMU than in the WAMZ. However, impulse responses of inflation to price and exchange rate shocks are symmetric in the WAMZ than in the WAEMU and responses of trade in both sub-groups are not uniform.

The paper concludes that the WAMZ does not constitute an Optimum Currency Area concerning the correlations of the structural shocks and output. However, it has achieved convergence in inflation and there are adequate adjustment mechanisms to shocks in the WAMZ than in the WAEMU. Therefore, the WAMZ may not suffer from joining the monetary union. Thus, economic Community of West African States may take steps to roll out the monetary union.

The paper examines correlations of the underlying structural shocks, impulse responses of output and inflation to shocks to commodities price and exchange rates in the WAMZ and compares them with the WAEMU.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and analyse the dynamic relationship between remittances inflows of Egyptians working abroad and asymmetric oil price shocks.

This study uses a vector autoregressive (VAR) model to explain the impulse response functions (IRFs) and the forecast error variance decomposition (FEVD). The rationale behind using these tools is its ability to examine the dynamic effects of our variables of interest.

The impulse response functions confirmed that remittance inflows have various responses to asymmetric oil price shocks. For instance, inflowing remittances increase in response to positive oil price shocks, while it decreases in response to negative oil price shocks. Also, the results indicate that the responses are significant in the short and medium-run and insignificant in the long run. The magnitude of these responses reaches its peak or trough in the third year. Further, the variance decomposition reveals that oil price decreases are more influential than oil price increases.

This means that remittances inflows in Egypt are pro-cyclical with oil price shocks. That explained by the fact that more than one-half of those remittances sent from GCC countries where real economic growth is very pro-cyclical with the oil prices. This empirical assessment will help policymakers to determine the behaviour of remittances and highlights the impact of different kinds of oil prices shocks on remittances. Unlike the little existing literature, this study is the first study applied the VAR model using a novel dataset spanning 1960-2016.

The study focuses on examining the impact of the supply shock on the Indian macroeconomic variables during the COVID-19 period.

Time-varying factor augmented vector autoregressive model has been employed to study the asymmetry in transmission of supply shock on Indian economy during pre- and post-COVID-19 times.

The authors find that with supply shock, retail food inflation outpaced in COVID-19 times. Production levels reported by IIP fell to abysmally low levels in the post-COVID-19 times when the economy stalled. The liquidity stimulus provided by the central bank led to the negative response of policy rates to the supply shocks during the COVID-19 times.

The study stands novel in examining the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on Indian economy through the lenses of asymmetric transmission of supply shock during pre- and post-COVID-19 times.

Might the impact of the financial stress on exchange markets be asymmetric and exposed to regime changes? Departing from the existing literature, highlighting that the domestic and foreign financial stress in terms of money market have substantial effects on exchange market, this paper aims to investigate the impacts of the bond yield spreads of three emerging countries (Mexico, Russia, and South Korea) on their exchange market pressure indices using monthly observations for the period 2010:01–2019:12. Additionally, the paper analyses the impact of bond yield spread of the US on the exchange market pressure indices of the three mentioned emerging countries. The authors hypothesized whether the negative and positive changes in the bond yield spreads have varying effects on exchange market pressure indices.

To address the research question, we measure the bond yield spread of the selected countries by using the interest rate spread between 10-year and 3-month treasury bills. At the same time, the exchange market pressure index is proxied by the index introduced by Desai et al. (2017). We base the empirical analysis on nonlinear vector autoregression (VAR) models and an asymmetric quantile-based approach.

The results of the impulse response functions indicate that increases/decreases in the bond yield spreads of Mexico, Russia and South Korea raise/lower their exchange market pressure, and the effects of shocks in the bond yield spreads of the US also lead to depreciation/appreciation pressures in the local currencies of the emerging countries. The quantile connectedness analysis, which allows for the role of regimes, reveals that the weights of the domestic and foreign bond yield spread in explaining variations of exchange market pressure indices are higher when exchange market pressure indices are not in a normal regime, indicating the role of extreme development conditions in the exchange market. The quantile regression model underlines that an increase in the domestic bond yield spread leads to a rise in its exchange market pressure index during all exchange market pressure periods in Mexico, and the relevant effects are valid during periods of high exchange market pressure in Russia. Our results also show that Russia differs from Mexico and South Korea in terms of the factors influencing the demand for domestic currency, and we have demonstrated the role of domestic macroeconomic and financial conditions in surpassing the effects of US financial stress. More specifically, the impacts of the domestic and foreign financial stress vary across regimes and are asymmetric.

This study enriches the literature on factors affecting the exchange market pressure of emerging countries. The results have significant economic implications for policymakers, indicating that the exchange market pressure index may trigger a financial crisis and economic recession.

The purpose of this study is to reveal the dynamics of house prices and sales in spatial and temporal dimensions across British regions.

This paper incorporates two empirical approaches to describe the behaviour of property prices across British regions. The models are applied to two different data sets. The first empirical approach is to apply the price diffusion model proposed by Holly et al. (2011) to the UK house price index data set. The second empirical approach is to apply a bivariate global vector autoregression model without a time trend to house prices and transaction volumes retrieved from the nationwide building society.

Identifying shocks to London house prices in the GVAR model, based on the generalized impulse response functions framework, I find some heterogeneity in responses to house price changes; for example, South East England responds stronger than the remaining provincial regions. The main pattern detected in responses and characteristic for each region is the fairly rapid fading of the shock. The spatial-temporal diffusion model demonstrates the presence of a ripple effect: a shock emanating from London is dispersed contemporaneously and spatially to other regions, affecting prices in nondominant regions with a delay.

The main contribution of this work is the betterment in understanding how house price changes move across regions and time within a UK context.

This study investigates the reasons behind the very high net interest margins in the Greek banking industry compared to the euro-area, focussing on the association between bank competition and recapitalisations.

The author conducts a dynamic panel analysis covering the period from the early 2000s to 2021, that controls for possible endogeneity and treats for heterogeneity. The author also employs local projections impulse response functions that control for structural changes in Greek banking.

The author finds that low bank competition has contributed to high net interest margins in Greece. Interestingly, the impact of recapitalisations conditional to low bank competition has had a significant further impact on increasing net interest margins, which is a noteworthy case due to several Greek bank recapitalisations in the last ten years. The author’s findings are supported by local projections impulse response functions.

To mitigate distortions in bank competition, the author argues to accelerate steps toward the direction of the banking union and a common bank regulation framework in the euro-area.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the symmetric and asymmetric effects of exchange rate uncertainty on employment in South Africa’s manufacturing sector over the period 1985Q1–2019Q2.

Jorda’s (2005) local projection method is employed and following Koop et al. (1996); generalized impulse response functions are generated to see the effect of exchange rate uncertainty on employment in South Africa’s manufacturing sector.

The results show that exchange rate uncertainty affects negatively and significantly employment in South Africa’s manufacturing sector. Employment also responds negatively and significantly to export shock. Inflation and output shocks, however, positively and significantly affect employment on impact. Asymmetric responses of employment to exchange rate uncertainty are also found in this study. While high exchange rate uncertainty leads to a reduction in employment, low exchange rate uncertainty brings an increase in employment in South Africa’s manufacturing sector.

This research adds to the scarce empirical literature on the effect of exchange rate uncertainty on employment in South Africa’s manufacturing sector by incorporating mainly non-linearities into the model.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between consumer awareness of Zespri International Limited (Zespri™) and its sales promotion in Japan and the recent expansion of New Zealand (NZ) kiwifruit imported into Japan.

Tweets mentioning Zespri™ were utilised as a proxy of such awareness. They were first summarised using two text-mining techniques: tf-idf scoring and a co-occurrence network graph. Afterwards, the authors estimated a tri-variate vector autoregression (VAR) model consisting of the net imports of NZ kiwifruit in Japan, unit import price and number of tweets. Additionally, the occurrence frequency of tweets with “Kiwi Brothers”, promotional characters for Zespri™’s sales, was added to the model, and a tetra-variate VAR model was estimated. Finally, Granger-causality tests, an estimation of the impulse response function and forecast error variance decomposition was conducted.

All these variables were found to Granger-cause each other. Furthermore, a shock in the document frequency of “Kiwi Brothers” significantly affected Japan’s kiwifruit imports from NZ, explaining approximately 20% of future imports. Zespri™’s distinctive sales promotion was, thus, found to contribute in part to the recent increase in NZ’s kiwifruit export to Japan.

This paper is the first to apply text-regression methodology to food consumption research; it contributes to food consumption research by proposing a practical way to combine tweets with outcome variables using a time-series analysis.

The authors construct an index of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) for Greece using textual analysis and analyze its role in the 10-year Greek economic crisis.

To identify the causal relationship between various measures of economic activity and EPU in Greece, the authors use a sophisticated “shock-based” structural vector autoregressive identification scheme. Additionally, the authors use two additional models to ensure the robustness of the results.

EPU is negatively associated with domestic economic activity and economic sentiment, and positively with bond credit spreads. EPU is also estimated to have prolonged the crisis even in periods when macroeconomic imbalances were cured. The results are robust across various model specifications and different proxies of economic activity.

Brunnermeier (2017) observed that uncertainty may be central to understanding the evolution of the Greek crisis. Yet little attention has been paid to policy uncertainty in the existing long and growing literature on the Greek crisis. The authors attempt to fill this gap.