Health and Healthcare Systems

COVID-19 has brought about a second pandemic: financial anxiety

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., March 20, 2020. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson - Coronavirus china virus health healthcare who world health organization disease deaths pandemic epidemic worries concerns Health virus contagious contagion viruses diseases disease lab laboratory doctor health dr nurse medical medicine drugs vaccines vaccinations inoculations technology testing test medicinal biotechnology biotech biology chemistry physics microscope research influenza flu cold common cold bug risk symptomes respiratory china iran italy europe asia america south america north washing hands wash hands coughs sneezes spread spreading precaution precautions health warning covid 19 cov SARS 2019ncov wuhan sarscow wuhanpneumonia  pneumonia outbreak patients unhealthy fatality mortality elderly old elder age serious death deathly deadly  women business businesswoman businessman corporation corporate finance wall street stock exchange capitalism private ownership board c-suite CEOs CFOs corporation united states us america wall street change gender parity equality goldman sachs davos industry representation fair finance fiscal financial economics economies trading trade price money profit value men male female change changing 2020 future taxation tax wealth gross domestic product gdp

The COVID-19 pandemic has already had huge effects on the global economy. Image: REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

Robert J. Shiller
Sterling Professor of Economics, Yale University
Share:
Our Impact
What's the World Economic Forum doing to accelerate action on Health and Healthcare Systems?
The Big Picture
Explore and monitor how COVID-19 is affecting economies, industries and global issues
A hand holding a looking glass by a lake
Crowdsource Innovation
Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale
Stay up to date:

COVID-19

  • Economist Robert J. Shiller discusses the idea that COVID-19 has brought about two pandemics, not just one.
  • The first is the COVID-19 health pandemic. The second, a pandemic of anxiety over the economic consequences of the first.
  • Shiller explores what this second pandemic is likely to look like.

These two pandemics are interrelated, but are not the same phenomenon. In the second pandemic, stories of fear have gone so viral that we often think of them constantly. The stock market has been dropping like a rock, apparently in response to stories of COVID-19 depleting our lifetime saving unless we take some action. But, unlike COVID-19 itself, the source of our anxiety is that we are unsure what action to take.

It is not good news when two pandemics are at work simultaneously. One can feed the other. Business closures, soaring unemployment, and loss of income fuel financial anxiety, which may, in turn, deter people, desperate for work, from taking adequate precautions against the spread of the disease.

Have you read?

Moreover, it is not good news when two contagions are, indeed, global pandemics. When a drop in demand is confined to one country, the loss is partially spread abroad, while demand for the country’s exports is not diminished much. But this time, that natural safety valve won’t work, because the recession threatens nearly all countries.

Many people seem to assume that the financial anxiety is nothing more than a direct byproduct of the COVID-19 crisis – a perfectly logical reaction to the disease pandemic. But anxiety is not perfectly logical. The pandemic of financial anxiety, spreading through panicked reaction to price drops and changing narratives, has a life of its own.

The effects financial anxiety has on the stock market may be mediated by a phenomenon that psychologist Paul Slovic of the University of Oregon and his colleagues call the “affect heuristic.” When people are emotionally upset because of a tragic event, they react with fear even in circumstances where there is no reason to fear.

In a joint paper with William Goetzmann and Dasol Kim, we found that nearby earthquakes affect people’s judgment of the probability of a 1929- or 1987-size stock-market crash. If there was a substantial earthquake centering within 30 miles (48 kilometers) within the previous 30 days, respondents’ assessment of the probability of a crash was significantly higher. That is the affect heuristic at work.

It might make more sense to expect a stock-market drop from a disease epidemic than from a recent earthquake, but maybe not a crash of the magnitude seen recently. If it were widely believed that a treatment could limit the intensity of the COVID-19 pandemic to a matter of months, or even that the pandemic would last a year or two, that would suggest that the stock-market risk is not so great for a long-term investor. One could buy, hold, and wait it out.

But a contagion of financial anxiety works differently than a contagion of disease. It is fueled in part by people noticing others’ lack of confidence, reflected in price declines, and others’ emotional reaction to the declines. A negative bubble in the stock market occurs when people see prices falling, and, trying to discover why, start amplifying stories that explain the decline. Then, prices fall on subsequent days, and again and again.

Observing successive decreases in stock prices creates a powerful feeling of regret for those who have not sold, together with a fear that one might sell at the bottom. This regret and fear prime people’s interest in both pandemic narratives. Where the market goes from there depends on their nature and evolution.

To see this, consider that the stock market in the United States did not crater when, in September-October 1918, the news media first started covering the Spanish flu pandemic that eventually claimed 675,000 US lives (and over fifty million worldwide). Instead, monthly prices in the US market were on an uptrend from September 1918 to July 1919.

Coronavirus Covid-19 virus infection China Hubei Wuhan contagion spread economics dow jones S&P 500 stock market crash 1929 depression great recession
Monthly prices in the US market have been on an uptrend from September 1918 to July 1919. Image: Project Syndicare

Why didn’t the market crash? One likely explanation is that World War I, which was approaching its end after the last major battle, the Second Battle of the Marne, in July-August 1918, crowded out the influenza story, especially after the armistice in November of that year. The war story was likely more contagious than the flu story.

Another reason is that epidemiology was only in its infancy then. Outbreaks were not as forecastable, and the public did not fully believe experts’ advice, with people’s adherence to social-distancing measures “sloppy.” Moreover, it was generally believed that economic crises were banking crises, and there was no banking crisis in the US, where the Federal Reserve System, established just a few years earlier, in 1913, was widely heralded as eliminating that risk.

But perhaps the most important reason the financial narrative was muted during the 1918 influenza epidemic is that far fewer people owned stocks a century ago, and saving for retirement was not the concern it is today, in part because people didn’t live as long and more routinely depended on family if they did.

This time, of course, is different. We see buyers’ panics at local grocery stores, in contrast to 1918, when wartime shortages were regular occurrences. With the Great Recession just behind us, we certainly are well aware of the possibility of major drops in asset prices. Instead of a tragic world war, this time the US is preoccupied with its own political polarization, and there are many angry narratives about the federal government’s mishandling of the crisis.

Predicting the stock market at a time like this is hard. To do so well, we would have to predict the direct effects on the economy of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as all the real and psychological effects of the pandemic of financial anxiety. The two are different, but inseparable.

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

Sign up for free

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

Related topics:
Health and Healthcare SystemsEquity, Diversity and InclusionEconomic Growth
Share:
World Economic Forum logo
Global Agenda

The Agenda Weekly

A weekly update of the most important issues driving the global agenda

Subscribe today

You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in our emails. For more details, review our privacy policy.

Funding the future: Sustainable financing models to help the fight against antimicrobial resistance

Shyam Bishen

October 10, 2024

About us

Engage with us

  • Sign in
  • Partner with us
  • Become a member
  • Sign up for our press releases
  • Subscribe to our newsletters
  • Contact us

Quick links

Language editions

Privacy Policy & Terms of Service

Sitemap

© 2024 World Economic Forum