The impact of natural disasters on global stock market : the case of the Japanese 2011 earthquake

Abstract

In this study, we investigate the impact of the Japanese earthquake 2011 on six most representative stock markets all over the world. An event study procedure is employed to analyze the data from all of these markets. Daily average abnormal return, cumulative abnormal return and average cumulative abnormal return are calculated to perform the test and analyze the reaction of the stock markets. Consistent with the literature, this paper finds that a negative shock brought by this catastrophic natural disaster exists in all of the six stock markets. But this impact is surprisingly small. Under the statistic t-test, the shock on all of the six stock markets is statistically insignificant. But for some individual stocks, this earthquake shows a significantly impact. The impact is either positive or negative. The direction of impact will depend on the industries that the company is involved in.