Abstract
In this paper, we study the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the
economic conditions and the stock markets of countries across the world. We find that
an increase in contagion and death rate due to the pandemic inversely affects both the
country’s GDP and its stock markets. Next, we study the impact of government
stimulus on the economic conditions and the stock markets of each of the countries in
our sample. We find that the government stimulus moderates the effect of COVID-19
on the real condition of economies as we find that GDP is not affected by COVID-1-
-related death in the post-stimulus period. The stimulus alleviates the negative impact
of pandemic concerns on the stock markets, where the increase in contagion and death
rate due to COVID-19 positively correlates with the performance of stock markets in
the post-stimulus period.