PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to look at the contemporaneous movement of the stock market indices of the five most COVID-infected countries, namely, the USA, Brazil, Russia, India and UK after the first wave along with market indices of the three least affected countries, namely, Hong Kong, South Korea and New Zealand during the first wave.Design/methodology/approachData have been collected from the website of Yahoo finance on daily closing values of five indices. Augmented Dickey–Fuller test with its three forms has been applied to check the stationarity of the select five indices at the level and at the first difference before the pandemic, during the pandemic and post-first wave of the pandemic. Johansen cointegration test is applied to find out that there is no cointegration among the select five indices.FindingsThe five countries do neither fall in the same economic and political zone nor do they have the same economic status. But during the period of pandemic and the new-normal period, the cointegration is very distinct. The developing and developed nations thus stood at an indifferentiable stage of the economic crisis which is well reflected in their stock markets. However, the least three COVID-affected countries do not show any cointegration during the pandemic time.Originality/valueThe comovement even seen during the normal time in the other studies is not compared to a similar period in earlier years. But, in this study to look into the exclusive effect of COVID pandemic, the period most affected with it is compared with the period after it and that in the immediate past year had no effect.
The impact of external debt on investment is a very popular issue which has been empirically tested by many scholars. But when such debt becomes unsustainable it threatens sustainable economic development of a country. Since the inception of debt crisis in the 1980s, when and how external debt burden creates a debt overhang paradox is a controversial issue. Debt overhang is a paradox because debt is expected to stimulate growth and development of a country, but contrary to this expectation debt after crossing a threshold limit hinders such growth and development. This article examines whether huge external debt build over time really has a detrimental effect on investment at the country level. The present study has been conducted on 18 Asian countries of the world for the period from 2000 to 2015 by using the data from the World Development Indicators. Panel regression technique has been applied to examine the impact of external debt on investment. A Granger causality test has also been conducted on external debt and investment to find out whether external debt has any causal impact on investment. The result shows the existence of the debt overhang paradox.
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