This paper investigates the effect of COVID‐19 on the global stock market. Specifically, we test whether the growth in the number of confirmed cases/deaths affects market quality, measured by return, realised volatility, jumps and co‐jumps for 43 stock indices around the world. We find that an increase in the growth rate of the number of confirmed cases increases volatility and jumps while reducing return. Further, we explore whether economic, financial and political risks play any significant role in the relation between the number of confirmed cases/deaths and market quality. Overall, we find the risk from COVID‐19 overshadows these risks.

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This article documents the "neighbor effect" on the organ donation decision via living area type, offering an alternative exposition in raising the organ donation rate. In shifting the society norm toward organ donation consent, policy-makers should acknowledge the benefit of urbanization on organ donation decision derived from resourceful urban areas. Moreover, raising education levels does improve not only citizens' well-being but also their tendency to exhibit an altruistic act toward others.

Railway systems are instrumental to countries’ economies. They are also vulnerable to man-made and natural disruptions and therefore need to be protected. This paper introduces an optimization model to identify the set of fortifications and network expansions to mitigate the impact of worst-case disruptions. The model incorporates multiple travel segments allowing to study the impact of different route choice behaviours. A Benders decomposition approach is developed to solve the bilevel problem alongside a more efficient nested GRASP heuristic. The algorithms are tested and compared on a set of artificial grids. A case study is developed using the Central London Tube network to provide managerial insights.

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