Public Concern and the Financial Markets during the COVID-19 outbreak

2020/05/14 by Michele Costola, Costola, Michele, Matteo Iacopini +3
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Mathematics · Social Sciences · #COVID-19 Pandemic Impacts #COVID-19 epidemiological studies #FOS: Economics and business #General Finance (q-fin.GN) #Misinformation and Its Impacts #Statistical Finance (q-fin.ST)

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2005.06796

openalex publication_date 2020/05/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

We measure the public concern during the outbreak of COVID-19 disease using three data sources from Google Trends (YouTube, Google News, and Google Search). Our findings are three-fold. First, the public concern in Italy is found to be a driver of the concerns in other countries. Second, we document that Google Trends data for Italy better explains the stock index returns of France, Germany, Great Britain, the United States, and Spain with respect to their country-based indicators. Finally, we perform a time-varying analysis and identify that the most severe impacts in the financial markets occur at each step of the Italian lock-down process.

Related

• Impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on Italy's country reputation and stock\n market performance: a sentiment analysis approach
• Country Responses and the Reaction of the Stock Market to COVID-19—a Preliminary Exposition
• Anxiety for the pandemic and trust in financial markets
• The COVID-19 Outbreak and Affected Countries Stock Markets Response
• Feverish Stock Price Reactions to COVID-19*