ABSTRACT
The aim of the research was to measure the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the dynamics of financial instruments in international trade. The study examined the dynamics of price changes and determined the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the price of futures contracts on the global market. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the futures volatility dynamics in the global financial market was explored for major commodity groups. The least-squares method was used as the main regression testing tool, while dynamics of the indicators was assessed through graphical and trends methods. The study involves the World Bank’s data for 2000-2021. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the coal, natural gas, metals, beverage and food futures price on the global financial market was established and proved to be statistically significant. It was found that the pandemic had a statistically significant impact on the volatility of futures for coal, natural gas and tin on the global financial market. The futures price is being affected by the COVID-19 pandemic because of the collapse of global supply chains and countries’ protectionist measures. In aggregate, this produces imbalances in the distribution of goods in the world and impedes their flow. The market is consequently responding to the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic by raising prices. The results obtained open up new lines for research, in particular the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the supply and demand structure on the world commodity markets. © 2022, World Scientific and Engineering Academy and Society. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Testing is a crucial control mechanism for an epidemic outbreak because it enables the health authority to detect and isolate the infected cases, thereby limiting the disease transmission to susceptible people, when no effective treatment or vaccine is available. In this paper, an epidemic model that incorporates the testing rate as a control input is presented. The proposed model distinguishes between the undetected infected and the detected infected cases with the latter assumed to be isolated from the disease spreading process in the population. Two testing policies, effective during the onset of an epidemic when no treatment or vaccine is available, are devised: (i) best-effort strategy for testing (BEST) and (ii) constant optimal strategy for testing (COST). The BEST is a suppression policy that provides a lower bound on the testing rate to stop the growth of the epidemic. The COST is a mitigation policy that minimizes the peak of the epidemic by providing a constant, optimal allocation of tests in a certain time interval when the total stockpile of tests is limited. Both testing policies are evaluated by their impact on the number of active intensive care unit (ICU) cases and the cumulative number of deaths due to COVID-19 in France.