Investment behavior during COVID pandemic: An evidence from emerging Asian Markets

Authors

Sana Tauseef, Institute of Business Administration (IBA)Follow

Abstract

This study investigates the investor behavior in Asian emerging markets during the COVID pandemic period and assesses the asymmetric patterns and the influence of global and regional return dynamics on local investor behavior. It uses daily firm-level data from January 2001 to December 2020 for nine Asian emerging countries: China, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Taiwan and Thailand to estimate the impact of extreme price movements, market liquidity and US and Chinese market returns on local return dispersions using a non-linear specification. The findings indicate that rational price behavior prevailed in all markets over the COVID period. Though herding manifested itself occasionally during the low trading volume days in the pandemic period; overall, herd formation was not observed conditioned on domestic or non-domestic factors. Infact, our comparison of pre-COVID and COVID periods shows a significant shift in investment behavior away from herding and in favor of market efficiency for emerging markets of China, India and Korea. The findings on prevalence of rational price behavior are unique and reflective of improved informational environment in Asian emerging markets.

Keywords

Rational price behavior, Herding, Return dispersions, Pandemic

DOI

https://doi.org/10.54784/1990-6587.1265

Journal of Economic Literature Subject Codes

G11, G12, G14

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

Tauseef, S. (2021). Investment behavior during COVID pandemic: An evidence from emerging Asian Markets. Business Review, 16(1), 76-100. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.54784/1990-6587.1265