The quest for multidimensional financial immunity to the COVID-19 pandemic: evidence from international stock markets

What determines a country's financial immunity to a global pandemic? To answer this question, we investigate the behavior of 67 equity markets around the world during the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020. We consider a multidimensional data set that includes factors from finance, economics, demographics, technological development, healthcare, governance, culture, and law. Our study also accounts for government interventions, such as containment and closure policies, and economic stimuli. We apply machine learning techniques, panel regression, and factor analysis to ascertain sources of financial immunity to the coronavirus pandemic. Our findings demonstrate that stock markets in countries with low unemployment rates and populated with firms with conservative investment policies and low valuations relative to expected profits tend to be more immune to the healthcare crisis. We also find that firm government policy responses tend to support stock markets in times of the pandemic.