We examine the relationship between cryptocurrencies (namely Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Ripple (XRP)) and COVID-19 cases/deaths. This will help explore whether cryptocurrencies can serve as a hedge against COVID-19. The wavelet coherence analysis indicates that there is initially a negative relationship between Bitcoin and the number of reported cases and deaths; however, the relationship becomes positive during the later period. The findings for Ethereum and Ripple are also similar but with weaker interactions. This supports the hedging role of cryptocurrencies against the uncertainty raised by COVID-19.

Highlights We examine how pandemics affects tourist arrivals. The paper is the first to use newly developed “Discussion about Pandemics Index”. We find that pandemic decreases tourist arrivals. This effect exists only for low-income economies.

Originating in China, the coronavirus has reached the world at different speeds and levels of strength. This paper provides an initial understanding of some driving factors and their consequences. Since transmission requires people, the human factor behind globalisation is essential. Globalisation, a major force behind global well‐being and equality, is highly associated with this factor. The analysis investigates the impact globalisation has on the speed of initial transmission to a country and on the scale of initial infections in the context of other driving factors. Our cross‐country analysis finds that measures of globalisation are positively related to the spread of the virus, both in speed and in scale. However, the study also finds that globalised countries are better equipped to keep fatality rates low. The conclusion is not to reduce globalisation to avoid pandemics, but to better monitor the human factor at the outbreak and mobilise collaboration forces to curtail diseases.

In this paper, we explore whether economic uncertainty differently affects the default risk of Islamic and conventional banks. Using a sample of 568 banks from 20 countries between 2009 and 2018, we take advantage of the World Uncertainty Index (WUI) proposed by Ahir et al. (2018) to conduct a study based on a comparable measure across countries. Our findings indicate that, while economic uncertainty increases the default risk of conventional banks, Islamic banks' default risk is not affected. To shed light on why economic uncertainty differently influences the default risk of Islamic and conventional banks, we explore the influence of religiosity, institutional factors and bank-level heterogeneity. We observe that Islamic banks' default risk is immune to uncertainty in all types of countries but that such a difference with conventional banks mainly holds for banks with higher non-interest income and larger size, and for banks which are publicly traded. Moreover, our findings show that conventional banks suffer more from uncertainty in terms of stability in countries with higher religiosity. Our results are robust to alternative estimation techniques to deal with endogeneity and to alternative variable measurements.

More democratic countries are often expected to fail at providing a fast, strong, and effective response when facing a crisis such as COVID-19. This could result in higher infections and more negative health effects, but hard evidence to prove this claim is missing for the new disease. Studying the association with five different democracy measures, this study shows that while the infection rates of the disease do indeed appear to be higher for more democratic countries so far, their observed case fatality rates are lower. There is also a negative association between case fatality rates and government attempts to censor media. However, such censorship relates positively to the infection rate.

This paper analyzes the determinants of the price of gold with a special focus on four uncertainty measures (namely, the volatility (VIX), the skewness (SKEW), the global economic policy uncertainty (EPU), and the partisan conflict (PC) indexes). The nonlinear Autoregressive-distributed Lag (ARDL) model is used to investigate the asymmetric effect of uncertainty measures on gold prices. The results show that a worsening of economic policy uncertainty contributes to increases in the price of gold. By contrast, gold prices are less likely to fall when economic policy conditions have been improved.

This paper explores how foreign direct investment (FDI) and other determinants impact income inequality in Turkey in the short-and long-run. We apply the ARDL (AutoRegressive Distributed Lag) modelling approach, which is suitable for small samples. The data for the study cover the years from 1970 to 2008. The empirical results indicate the existence of a cointegration relationship among the variables. The positive impact of the FDI growth rate on income inequality, worsening inequality, is shown to be significant in the short-run, though at the 10% significance level only and with a quantitatively small impact, and insignificant in the long-run. In other words, FDI increases income inequality initially somewhat but this effect disappears in the long run. The literacy rate clearly reduces inequality in the long run, but also in the short run. On the other hand, population growth worsens inequality in the long run, and the effect is quite large, though it has no statistically significant effect on inequality in the short run. Also, an increase in GDP growth reduces inequality especially in the short run (at a 5% level of significance) but also in the long run (though only at the 10% level).JEL Classification: D31, F21, C32, C13

We examine the relationship between cryptocurrencies (namely Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Ripple (XRP)) and COVID-19 cases/deaths. This will help explore whether cryptocurrencies can serve as a hedge against COVID-19. The wavelet coherence analysis indicates that there is initially a negative relationship between Bitcoin and the number of reported cases and deaths; however, the relationship becomes positive during the later period. The findings for Ethereum and Ripple are also similar but with weaker interactions. This supports the hedging role of cryptocurrencies against the uncertainty raised by COVID-19.