Managing bank performance under COVID-19: A novel inverse DEA efficiency approach.

The evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic is highly unpredictable; however, its impacts are limited to neither a single sector nor a single country. This study evaluates the performance and efficiency of 49 Islamic banks across 10 countries during 2019-2020 to assess how those banks can preserve their performance and remain resilient in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the conventional inverse data envelopment analysis (InvDEA) approach, we show that because of reductions in their outputs, 31 out of the 49 banks studied would need to reduce their inputs so that their efficiency can remain unchanged. However, we show that only 10 banks need to make such adjustments to maintain their efficiency levels using our proposed InvDEA efficiency model. The adjustment for those 10 banks would help in reducing more inputs, suggesting more cost savings, and improving the overall efficiency of the examined banks, compared with the other 31 banks.

COVID-19 and finance scholarship: A systematic and bibliometric analysis.

COVID-19 has posed unprecedented challenges to global finances because of its unparalleled global scope, with both concomitant shocks as well as the likely altering of risk assessments and forecasts for the foreseeable future. As the effects of COVID-19 on financial markets and institutions have been widely addressed by various literature, we systematically synthesize this literature. Through a comprehensive search process, we extract and review 818 articles. Appling bibliometric methods, we explore the trends among various research constituents involved in the field. Using multi-dimensional scaling, we identify the intellectual structure of research in the domain and outline four distinct themes. We also identify the evolution and shifts in research within the short span of three years since the inception of COVID-19. Through detailed content analysis, various future research directions are proposed.

On the volatility of WTI crude oil prices: A time-varying approach with stochastic volatility

This study investigates the impacts of crude oil-market-specific fundamental factors and financial indicators on the realized volatility of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil price. A time-varying parameter vector autoregression model with stochastic volatility (TVP-VAR-SV) is applied to weekly data series spanning January 2008 to October 2021. It is found that the WTI oil price volatility responds positively to a shock in oil production, oil inventories, the US dollar index, and VIX but negatively to a shock in the US economic activity. The response to the EPU index was initially positive and then turned slightly negative before fading away. The VIX index has the most significant effect. Furthermore, the time-varying nature of the response of the WTI realized oil price volatility is evident. Extreme effects materialize during economic recessions and crises, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings can improve our understanding of the time-varying nature and determinants of WTI oil price volatility.

In search of hedges and safe havens during the COVID-19 pandemic: Gold versus Bitcoin, oil, and oil uncertainty.

This paper investigates the potential hedging and safe-haven properties of several alternative investment assets, including gold, Bitcoin, oil, and the oil price volatility index (OVX), against the risks of the Saudi stock market and its constituent sectors in different phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using daily data, we employ the bivariate dynamic conditional correlation-generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (DCC-GARCH) technique to model volatilities and conditional correlations. Our findings show that all investigated alternative investment assets had a time-varying hedging role in the Saudi stock market, which became expensive during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results also show that the optimal weights for gold were substantially higher than those of other assets, reaching a peak during the pandemic, implying that investors consider gold a flight-to-safety asset. Additionally, we find that gold and OVX were strong hedges and could have served as weak safe havens for investors during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, while the remaining assets generally lacked these properties and could be merely used as diversifiers. Our empirical findings offer several key implications for policymakers and portfolio managers in Saudi Arabia that may be applicable to similar markets. In particular, we show that OVX-based products can serve as a promising hedging asset for stock markets in oil-exporting countries.

Forecasting oil commodity spot price in a data-rich environment.

Statistical properties that vary with time represent a challenge for time series forecasting. This paper proposes a change point-adaptive-RNN (CP-ADARNN) framework to predict crude oil prices with high-dimensional monthly variables. We first detect the structural breaks in predictors using the change point technique, and subsequently train a prediction model based on ADARNN. Using 310 economic series as exogenous factors from 1993 to 2021 to predict the monthly return on the WTI crude oil real price, CP-ADARNN outperforms competing benchmarks by 12.5% in terms of the root mean square error and achieves a correlation of 0.706 between predicted and actual returns. Furthermore, the superiority of CP-ADARNN is robust for Brent oil price as well as during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings of this paper provide new insights for investors and researchers in the oil market.

Systemic risk-sharing framework of cryptocurrencies in the COVID-19 crisis.

We use the Conditional Value-at-Risk (CoVaR) model to develop the systemic contagion index (SCI) for cryptocurrencies and examine their spillover effects. The SCI exhibits the highest value during the COVID-19 period, indicating evidence of pandemic-driven contagion channels. Similarly, cryptocurrency systemic networks show that the COVID-19 period induced increased interconnections, highlighting a higher number of systemic contagion channels. Our study has practical implications for investors to identify the systemic vulnerability of each cryptocurrency and make informed decisions during the crisis and non-crisis periods.

COVID-19 crisis and risk spillovers to developing economies: Evidence from Africa.

This study provides new evidence on how risk spillovers occur from the United States to developing economies in Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results show that downside risk exposures of African markets, financial firms and banks particularly increased during Phase I (30 January to 30 April 2020). The nature and magnitude of downside risk exposures of African financial markets were similar to those of the United States. Our results also reveal that the United States is a net transmitter of risk spillovers while Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt and Morocco are net recipients. Our conclusions offer guidance to risk managers, policymakers and investors.

Customer relationships, corporate social responsibility, and stock price reaction: Lessons from China during health crisis times

This paper studies the effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and customer relationships on the stock price during the COVID-19 pandemic. The empirical results show that CSR practices improve firms’ resilience to the negative health crisis shocks. The functional principal component analysis helps display the relationship between CSR and cumulative abnormal returns (CAR). It shows that CSR practices improve customers’ cooperation willingness. Customers of high-CSR firms pay invoices faster during the crisis, which results in less increment of accounts receivable. Hence, high-CSR firms gain more cash support from their customers to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in higher cumulative abnormal returns.

The gender gap in access to finance: Evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Using gender as a theoretical framework, we analyse the dynamics of debt and equity financing during the COVID-19 pandemic for a cross-country sample of 8,921 private firms. We provide evidence of a slight gender bias in debt financing, with creditors favouring female entrepreneurs when dealing with cash flow problems during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find no evidence of gender bias in equity financing. The results are robust after controlling for a larger number of firm-specific characteristics and selection bias. We challenge the assumption of "gender-based discrimination" in the debt market, speculating that in the context of high uncertainty, prototypical forms of femininity may be advantageous as financial institutions seek to hedge their risk by favouring more conservative borrowers.

Is gold a hedge or a safe-haven asset in the COVID–19 crisis?

This study examines the role of gold as a hedge or safe-haven asset in different phases of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, corresponding to the timing of fiscal and monetary stimuli to support the weakened economy. Using high-frequency data, the results show that gold served as a safe-haven asset for stock markets during Phase I (December 31, 2019−March 16, 2020) of the pandemic. However, gold lost its safe-haven role during Phase II (March 17−April 24, 2020). The optimal weights of gold in S&P 500, Euro Stoxx 50, Nikkei 225, and WTI crude oil portfolios significantly increased during Phase II, suggesting that investors expanded investment in gold as a ‘flight-to-safety asset’ during the crisis. Further, hedging costs increased significantly during Phase II. These findings provide insight for individual and institutional investors and guidance to policymakers, regulators, and media on how gold evolved as a hedge and safe-haven asset in different phases of the pandemic.

COVID-19 media coverage and ESG leader indices.

This study examines the dynamic connectedness between COVID-19 media coverage index (MCI) and ESG leader indices. Our findings provide evidence that MCI plays a role in facilitating the transmission of contagion to advanced and emerging equity markets during the pandemic. The connectedness between MCI and ESG leader indices is more pronounced around March and April 2020 at the peak of the pandemic. The US is a net receiver of shocks reaffirming that it was the most affected country during the pandemic. Our results provide implications for investors, portfolio managers, and policymakers in mitigating financial risks during the pandemic.

COVID-19 and oil price risk exposure.

This study investigates oil price risk exposure of financial and non-financial industries around the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. The empirical results show that oil supply industries benefit from positive shocks to oil price risk in general, whereas oil user industries and financial industries react negatively to positive oil price shocks. The COVID-19 outbreak appears to moderate the oil price risk exposure of both financial and non-financial industries. This brings important implications in risk management of energy risk during the pandemic.

Financial contagion during COVID-19 crisis.

This study examines how financial contagion occurs through financial and nonfinancial firms between China and G7 countries during the COVID-19 period. The empirical results show that listed firms across these countries, financial and non-financial firms alike, experience significant increase in conditional correlations between their stock returns. However, the magnitude of increase in these correlations is considerably higher for financial firms during the COVID-19 outbreak, indicating the importance of their role in financial contagion transmission. They also show that optimal hedge ratios increase significantly in most cases, implying higher hedging costs during the COVID-19 period.