Download or read book COVID-19 Containment Measures and Expected Stock Volatility: High-Frequency Evidence from Selected Advanced Economies written by Viral V. Acharya and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2021-06-04 with total page 43 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We study the effect of COVID-19 containment measures on expected stock price volatility in some advanced economies, using event studies with hand-collected minute-level data and panel regressions with daily data. We find that six-month-ahead volatility indices dropped following announcements of initial or re-imposed lockdowns, and that they did not drop significantly following the easing of lockdowns. Such patterns are not as strong for three-month-ahead expected volatility and generally absent for one-month-ahead expected volatility. These results provide suggestive evidence for the existence of an intertemporal trade-off: although stringent containment measures cause short-term economic disruptions, they may reduce medium-term uncertainty (reflected in expected stock volatility) by boosting markets’ confidence that the outbreak would be under control more quickly.