The COVID-19 Impact On Emerging Markets

The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting global markets through unprecedented circumstances. Fears surrounding such a novel virus have led to dramatic market turbulence and massive tumbles in stock prices. In this article, the authors explore the impact of COVID-19 on a comprehensive sample of 46 emerging countries and assess investors' perceptions toward credit risk. The authors also record the volume of new bond issues in conventional and Islamic bond markets and find that indeed COVID-19 has harshly struck the emerging countries, driving sharp declines in stock market indexes, causing an escalation in volatility levels, and widening the premiums on sovereign credit default swaps. Such upheavals, however, did not yet reach global financial crisis levels. The authors finally examine the reactions of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) local governments, and central banks in response to such a crisis.