The Impact of Uncertain Welfare Quality on Equity Market Performance

Welfare quality is usually a stochastic outcome, as attempts at improving social welfare cannot be predicted in advance. The advances in stock market participation conclude that equity market performance is able to reflect investors’ mass reactions and therefore can fairly reflect the empiricism of...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Tarek Eldomiaty, Islam Azzam, Hoda El Kolaly, Nermeen Youssef, Marwa Anwar Sedik, Rehab ElShahawy
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2025-04-01
Series:International Journal of Financial Studies
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7072/13/2/67
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Welfare quality is usually a stochastic outcome, as attempts at improving social welfare cannot be predicted in advance. The advances in stock market participation conclude that equity market performance is able to reflect investors’ mass reactions and therefore can fairly reflect the empiricism of welfare quality. In this paper, the pillars of the Happy Planet Index (<i>hereinafter</i> HPI) are used as proxies for countries’ welfare quality. The data cover 57 countries where equity markets exist over the annual period of 2006–2020. The results indicate that (a) the three pillars of HPIs have historical positive impacts on market capitalization and stock turnover; (b) stochastically, life satisfaction has an expected positive impact on market capitalization and stock turnover; (c) firms located in high (low) HPIs, life satisfaction, and life expectancy have significant (insignificant) stochastic impacts on market capitalization; and (d) the historical ecological footprints have positive impacts on market capitalization and stock turnover, whereas stochastic impacts are statistically insignificant.
ISSN:2227-7072