Is there a shift contagion among stock markets during the COVID-19 crisis? Further insights from TYDL causality test

Using the Toda-Yamamoto-Dolado-Lutkepohl measure of causality, namely the TYDL procedure, which is reliable whatever the variables' integration order, this study attempts to investigate the existence of shift contagion effect between a set of global, regional, country and US sectoral indices during the COVID-19 crisis. The empirical findings not only reveal that the Chinese stock index has no influence on the rest of the studied stock market indices during the COVID-19 crisis, but also that the European stock index seems to become the major node influencing the market sentiment and, therefore, the other indices during the crisis.