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The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of terrorist attacks on the volatility and returns of the stock market in Tunisia.

The employed sample comprises 1250 trading day from the Tunisian stock index (Tunindex) and stock closing prices of 64 firms listed on the Tunisian stock market (TSM) from January 2011 to October 2015. The research opts for the general autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) and exponential generalized conditional heteroscedasticity (EGARCH) models framework in addition to the event study method to further assess the effect of terrorism on the Tunisian equity market.

The baseline results document a substantive impact of terrorism on the returns and volatility of the TSM index. In more details, the findings of the event study method show negative significant effects on mean abnormal returns with different magnitudes over the events dates. The outcomes propose that terrorism profoundly altered the behavior of the stock market and must receive sufficient attention in order to protect the financial market in Tunisia.

Very few evidence is found on the financial effects of terrorism over transition to democracy cases. This paper determines the salient reaction of the stock market to terrorism during democratic transition. The findings of this study shall have relevant implications for stock market participants and policymakers.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has led to unprecedented mental health repercussions in the lives of every individual including university students. Therefore, study on students’ psychological state and its associated factors during the pandemic are of importance. This study aims to discuss the aforementioned issue.

An online survey was done on a total of 207 university students of Pakistan to collect information on socio-demographic characteristics, concerns or fears amidst COVID-19 and mental distress. Validated tools; Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD-7) and Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9)-Depression were used to assess stress, anxiety and depression, respectively.

Around 14% of the university students were experiencing severe stress and anxiety, while 8.2% had severe depression. The authors found that stress among university students was related to psychiatric illness or symptoms (OR = 5.1: 1.1, 22.9) and unpredictability due to the pandemic (OR = 3.7: 1.2, 11.2). The significant determinants of anxiety were psychiatric illness/symptoms (OR = 6.6: 3.4, 12.9), implementation of public health measures (OR = 3.7: 1.1, 11.6), employed mothers (OR = 2.4: 1.1, 5.0) and lack of support from university administration (OR = 2.2: 1.0, 5.0). While the factors associated with depression included psychiatric illness or symptoms (OR = 8.4: 3.3, 21.5), unpredictability due to pandemic (OR = 6.8: 2.2, 20.7), impaired social support system (OR = 3.7: 1.3, 10.4) and studying without a scholarship (OR = 2.1: 1.0, 4.4).

These findings call for an urgent need to develop appropriate interventions and educational programs that could address the psychological needs of students.

The study directs the role of university and faculty in dealing the mental health needs of the student in COVID-19 pandemic time.

Educational programs are important that could address the psychological needs of students in COVID-19 pandemic.

University students reported mental distress during COVID-19 pandemic which shows that younger people are at risk of COVID-19 repercussions. Moreover, several stressors (i.e. impaired social support system and lack of support from universities) were revealed that could be mitigated by implementing appropriate strategies.