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.

COVID-19 social distancing measures and economic growth: Distinguishing short- and long-term effects.

Social distancing policies have been criticized for their adverse effect on economies. However, we evidence that while they have a short-run adverse effect, they also have a long-run recovery effect on economic growth. Utilizing quarterly gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate data from OECD member states, we find that the medium-term recovery effect of stringent social distancing policies on economic growth is three times higher the short-term adverse effect. We additionally investigate social distancing measures with sub-components of GDP, as well as the conditioning roles of institutional factors.

Co-movement of COVID-19 and Bitcoin: Evidence from wavelet coherence analysis.

We apply wavelet methods to daily data of COVID-19 world deaths and daily Bitcoin prices from 31th December 2019 to 29th April 2020. We find, especially for the period post April 5, that levels of COVID-19 caused a rise in Bitcoin prices. We contribute to the fast-growing body of work on the financial impacts of COVID-19, as well as to ongoing consideration of whether Bitcoin is a safe haven investment. Our results should be of great interest to both scholars and policy makers, as well as investment professionals interested in the financial implications of both COVID-19 and cryptocurrencies.

Co-movements and spillovers of oil and renewable firms under extreme conditions: New evidence from negative WTI prices during COVID-19.

We test for the existence of volatility spillovers and co-movements among energy-focused corporations during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, inclusive of the April 2020 events where West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil future prices became negative. Employing the spillover index approach of Diebold and Yilmaz (2012); as well as developing a DCC-FIGARCH conditional correlation framework and using estimated spillover indices built on a generalised vector autoregressive framework in which forecast-error variance decompositions are invariant to the variable ordering, we examine the sectoral transmission mechanisms of volatility shocks and contagion throughout the energy sector. Among several results, we find positive and economically meaningful spillovers from falling oil prices to both renewable energy and coal markets. However, this result is only found for the narrow portion of our sample surrounding the negative WTI event. We interpret our results being directly attributed to a sharp drop in global oil, gas and coal demand, rather than because of a sudden increase in oil supply. While investors observed the US fracking industry losing market share to coal, they also viewed renewables as more reliable mechanism to generate long-term, stable and low-cost supply.

Did Congress trade ahead? Considering the reaction of US industries to COVID-19.

During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in the US, there has been considerable media attention regarding several US legislators who traded stocks in late January through February 2020. The concern is that these legislators traded in anticipation of COVID-19 having a major impact on the financial markets, while publicly suggesting otherwise. We consider whether these legislator trades were in a time window, and of a nature, that would be consistent with trading ahead of the market. Towards this end, we assess the reactions of US industries to sudden COVID-related news announcements, concomitantly with an analysis of levels of investor attention to COVID. Results suggest that, at an industry-level, for legislator trading to be "ahead of the market" it needed to have been done prior to February 26, and involving the 15 industries we identify as having abnormal returns, especially medical and pharmaceutical products (positive); restaurants, hotels, and motels (negative); as well as services and utilities. These criteria are met by many of the legislator trades. Our results help to both parameterize concerns about this case of legislator trading; as well as provide insight into the reactions and expectations of investors toward COVID-19.

COVID-19 and finance: Agendas for future research.

This paper highlights the enormous economic and social impact of COVID-19 with respect to articles that have either prognosticated such a large-scale event, and its economic consequences, or have assessed the impacts of other epidemics and pandemics. A consideration of possible impacts of COVID-19 on financial markets and institutions, either directly or indirectly, is briefly outlined by drawing on a variety of literatures. A consideration of the characteristics of COVID-19, along with what research suggests have been the impacts of other past events that in some ways roughly parallel COVID-19, points toward avenues of future investigation.