The Impact of Catastrophic Events on Stock Returns: The Comparison of International Stock Markets

Abstract

The impact of political conflicts and natural disasters on global economy has been shown in previous studies; however evidence is lacking to show international impacts on global stock markets with statistical results This study investigates the impact of political conflicts and natural disasters on international stock markets throughout the period for 2010 to 2014 Utilizing event study methodology specifically the market model the findings reveal that the impact of the catastrophic events on six international countries such as U S Japan China Hong Kong South Korea and Taiwan have significant influenced international stock markets The results indicated that individual countries are more influenced by political conflicts than natural disasters and the more individual countries are related to international political interest the more they are affected by the events The findings say that the developed stock markets such as United States and Japan recover faster than emerging markets such as Shanghai South Korea and Taiwan It is because the developed markets have much transparent and well organized financial systems Finally the results indicate that several positive and negative co-movements are observed because of globalization and open market economy system

Date of Award	2015 Jul 23
Original language	English
Supervisor	Ann Shawing Yang (Supervisor)