COVID-19 vs. Russia-Ukraine Crisis: Capital Market Response
From the pure health crisis that countries faced at the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, in later stages it led to the creation of multiple economic and financial vulnerabilities. When the world economies started recovering from the pandemic negative impacts, Russia started its invasion of Ukraine. The study aims to add to the growing body of literature on the topic of crises caused by the COVID-19 and Russian–Ukraine war by analyzing and comparing the volatility of the world’s leading stock market performance benchmarks in the pre-crisis and crisis periods. For the analysis, Levene’s test is used to check the homogeneity/heterogeneity of variances of stock market returns. Analysis shows that all indexes performed better in the Russian–Ukraine crisis compared to the COVID-19 crisis, i.e., the volatility of returns of all indexes is significantly lower in the Russian-Ukraine crisis compared to the COVID-19 crisis.