Aye Corona! The contagion effects of being named Corona during the COVID-19 pandemic

Shaen Corbet; Yang Hou; Yang Hu; Brian Lucey; Les Oxley

doi:10.1016/j.frl.2020.101591

Aye Corona! The contagion effects of being named Corona during the COVID-19 pandemic

Financ Res Lett. 2021 Jan:38:101591. doi: 10.1016/j.frl.2020.101591. Epub 2020 May 20.

Authors

Shaen Corbet^{1

2}, Yang Hou², Yang Hu², Brian Lucey^{3

4

5}, Les Oxley²

Affiliations

¹ DCU Business School, Dublin City University, Dublin 9, Ireland.
² School of Accounting, Finance and Economics, University of Waikato, New Zealand.
³ Trinity Business School, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland.
⁴ Institute of Business Research, University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
⁵ University of Sydney Business School, Sydney, New South Wale.

Abstract

In the midst of the 2020 global COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent financial market collapse, corporate entities have to navigate a number of truly unforeseen contagion risks. However, one such group included those who shared their corporate identity with aspects of the rapidly evolving coronavirus. Our results indicate the existence of sharp, dynamic and new correlations between companies related to the term 'corona', outside of pre-existing interrelationships. We provide a number of observations as to why this situation occurred.

Keywords: COVID-19; Contagion; Coronavirus; Sentiment; Stock Market.