We investigate the impact of COVID-19 on the Indian financial market and compare it with the outcomes of two recent structural changes of the Indian economy: demonetization and implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST). Using daily stock return, net foreign institutional investment, and exchange rate data from January 3, 2003 to April 20, 2020, we find negative stock returns for all the indices during the COVID-19 outbreak, unlike during the post-demonetization and GST phases. Markov switching vector autoregression shows the impact of COVID-19 on stock returns is severe in comparison to that of demonetization and the GST.

We develop empirical models using difference-in-difference method to find out how COVID-19 testing and infection rates impact the BRICS economy. Our results show that strict government measures, areas of poor people and people with heart diseases have resulted in high COVID-19 testing due to the increasing infections, However, economic development and population density are not found to be rather insignificant towards the COVID-19 testing rates. Hence, both from policy and pandemic perspectives, it is inferred that these developing economies need to divert more resources and infuse more investment in the healthcare sector in the coming days. Governments must give due stress to the health sector along with development irrespective of nature of the economy. Our results show that strict government measures, areas of poor people and people with heart diseases have resulted in high COVID-19 testing due to the increasing infections. Both from policy and pandemic perspectives, it is inferred that these BRICS economies need to divert more resources and infuse more investment in the healthcare sector.

We investigate the impact of COVID-19 on the Indian financial market and compare it with the outcomes of two recent structural changes of the Indian economy: demonetization and implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST). Using daily stock return, net foreign institutional investment, and exchange rate data from January 3, 2003 to April 20, 2020, we find negative stock returns for all the indices during the COVID-19 outbreak, unlike during the post-demonetization and GST phases. Markov switching vector autoregression shows the impact of COVID-19 on stock returns is severe in comparison to that of demonetization and the GST.

We investigate the connection between the carbon ecological footprint, economic globalization, population density, financial sector development, and economic growth in five South Asian nations from 1971 to 2019. Using a panel autoregressive distributed lag model, we find that population density, economic growth, and economic globalization positively affect the carbon ecological footprint in the long run. However, financial development is inversely related to the carbon ecological footprint at a 10% statistical level of significance.

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