This study aims to investigate the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the stock markets of sixteen countries. Pooled OLS regression, conventional t-test and Mann-Whitney test are used to estimate the results of the study. We construct a weekly panel data of COVID-19 new cases and stock returns. Pooled OLS estimation result shows that the growth rate of weekly new cases of COVID-19 negatively predicts the return in stock market. Next, the returns on leading stock indices of these countries during the COVID-19 outbreak period are compared with returns during the non-COVID period. We use a t-test and Mann-Whitney test to compare the returns. The results reveal that investors in these countries do not react to the media news of COVID-19 at the early stage of the pandemic. However, once the human-to-human transmissibility had been confirmed, all of the stock market indices negatively reacted to the news in the short- and long-event window. Interestingly, we noticed that the Shanghai Composite Index, which was severely affected during the short-event window, bounced back during the long-event window. This indicates that the Chinese government’s drastic measures to contain the spread of the pandemic regained the confidence of investors in the Shanghai Stock Market.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the determinants of the capital structure of firms operating in a developing economy, Pakistan. The quantile regression method is applied on a sample of 183 non-financial companies listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange during the period of 2008-2017. Specifically, the empirical analysis focuses on changes in the coefficients of the determinants according to the leverage ratio quantiles of the examined listed firms. The findings show that the capital structure of Pakistan listed firms differs between firms in different quantiles of leverage. These differences are significant with the sign of explanatory variables changes with the level of leverage. The research result found tangibility, profitability and age to be positively related to leverage among listed firms in Pakistan. However, size, liquidity and non-debt tax shield (NDTS) are negatively related to leverage. A firm’s growth and risk are found to be insignificant predictors of capital structure in Pakistan listed firms. Moreover, the study also found a significant impact of industry characteristic on leverage. The findings of this study indicate that an individual firm’s finance policy needs to be responsive to the firm’s characteristics and should match with the different borrowing requirements of listed firms.