The impact of COVID-19 on stock market performance in Africa: A Bayesian structural time series approach

Paul Owusu Takyi and Isaac Bentum-Ennin

Journal of Economics and Business, 2021, vol. 115, issue C, No S0148619520304124

Abstract: This paper evaluates and quantifies the short-term impact of the coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) on stock market performance in thirteen (13) African countries, using daily time series stock market data spanning 1st October 2019 to 30th June 2020. We employ a novel Bayesian structural time series approach (a state-space model) to estimate the relative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on stock market performance in those countries. Generally, our Bayesian posterior estimates show that, in relative terms, stock market performances in Africa have significantly reduced during and after the occurrence of the COVID-19, usually between -2.7 % and -21 %. At the heterogeneous level, we find that 10 countries have their stock markets significantly and adversely affected by the COVID-19, whereas the remaining 3 countries see no significant impact (or a rather short-lived negative significant impact) of the COVID-19 pandemic on their stock markets. We find that, within our sample period, there is almost no chance that the COVID-19 pandemic would have positive effects on the stock market performance in Africa. Our findings contribute to the discussion and research on the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic by providing empirical evidence that the pandemic has restrictive effects on stock market performance in African economies.

Keywords: COVID-19; Sock market performance; Bayesian approach; Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148619520304124
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jebusi:v:115:y:2021:i:c:s0148619520304124

DOI: 10.1016/j.jeconbus.2020.105968

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economics and Business is currently edited by Emanuele Bajo and Moritz Ritter

More articles in Journal of Economics and Business from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().