No abstract

No abstract

This paper investigates the Chicago Board Option Exchange Volatility Index's (‘VIX’) response to the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, in terms of information efficiency. First, we estimate an Efficiency Index over rolling windows, based on closing levels, for a period between 1995-01-03 and 2020-12-30. Second, we check for the presence of deterministic chaos in efficiency series, by using the largest Lyapunov exponent and sample, as well as permutation entropy. However, we do not find that these estimators provide a clear evidence of a substantial change in VIX's efficiency during 2020, in terms of deterministic chaos and irregular dynamics.

Although a growing number of countries are experiencing structural societal changes characterised by an increased prominence of post materialistic societal goals and personal values, there is limited empirical evidence on the economic effects of post materialism. In this paper, we address this gap in the literature by estimating the effect of post materialism on the level of economic development for a heterogeneous set of countries. Furthermore, in line with the notion that institutions may act as transmission channel of economic effects of social values, we estimate whether institutions transmit indirect effects from post materialism. Our findings show that post materialism and institutions both generate sizeable effects on economic development. Institutions create consistent positive effects. The effect of post materialism consists of a negative direct effect and a larger positive indirect effect transmitted via institutions related to personal freedom, a solid regulatory framework and low corruption. These findings reflect the importance of accounting for the effects of social values such as post materialism and institutions as well as their interrelationship to identify more fully their impact on economic development.

By using data for 45 countries, for a time span between 2009 and 2014, the present paper supports the thesis of a positive and significant correlation between the rule of law and capital market development. In order to achieve this goal, the Rule of Law variable reported by Worldwide Governance Indicators is considered. The relationship remains robust even if control variables such as other legal system variables, including protection of minority investors, enforcing contracts or strength of legal rights of borrowers and lenders as well as initial levels of market development, economic growth, market liquidity, domestic credit to private sector and foreign direct investments are considered.