Impact of COVID-19 on China's business and economic conditions: the importance of quantile asymmetries.

China has remained a growth engine for the global economy for the last several years. In this study, we assess the impact of COVID-19 on China's business and economic conditions; employing the quantile-on-quantile (QQ) regression and the quantile causality approaches. These econometrics batteries suit our research postulation, as they are capable to delineate underlying asymmetries across the whole distribution, based on which we can infer whether the response of China's business and economic conditions towards COVID-19 is heterogenous or homogenous. Utilizing the novel business and economic conditions measures, we observed that COVID-19 had initially disrupted both business and economic conditions in China. However, they showcased recovery over time. Our in-depth analysis allowed us to infer that the effect of COVID-19 on China's business and economic conditions is heterogeneous across different quantiles, and there is reliable evidence of asymmetry. The outcomes of quantile causality in mean and variance corroborate our primary estimations. These findings educate policymakers, companies, and other stakeholders to understand the nuances of China's business and economic conditions vis-a-vis COVID-19 in the short-run and as time elapsed.

Impact of COVID-19 and economic policy uncertainty on China's stock market returns: evidence from quantile-on-quantile and causality-in-quantiles approaches.

COVID-19 unexpectedly ensnared the entire world and wreaked havoc on global economic and financial systems. The stock market is sensitive to black swan events, and the COVID-19 disaster was no exception. Against this backdrop, this study explores the impact of COVID-19 and economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on Chinese stock markets' returns for the period spanning January 23, 2020 to August 04, 2021. The outcomes of the novel quantile-on-quantile regression analysis revealed that both COVID-19 and EPU had a significant negative impact on both Shanghai and Shenzhen stock market returns, while COVID-19 aggravated the level of economic uncertainty in both financial markets. The quantile causality approach of Troster et al. (2018) validates our main estimations. We conclude that COVID-19 and a high level of EPU enervated the returns of China's leading stock markets. Our study provides key insights to policymakers and market participants to determine the behavior of China's stock market returns vis-à-vis COVID-19 during the peak of the pandemic and beyond. Specifically, our findings apprise portfolio investors to augment their portfolio diversification fronts.