How COVID-19 travels in- and outside of value chains and then affects the stock market: Evidence from China

Abstract

The organisation of value chains within and between firms and even countries is an important reason for domestic as well as international travel. Hence, value chains create interdependencies which have to do with economic but also personal interactions between firms and places. The latter means value chains are a springboard for shocks—positive or negative—to travel and other related outcomes. This paper sheds light on how input–output relations in China as one human-interaction-intensive activity can help explain spreading patterns of COVID-19 in the first few months of 2020 in China. We document that COVID-19 at that time spread more intensively where input–output relations were stronger between cities in China, and this contributed to inducing direct and mediated, indirect effects on the stock market.