Government reporting credibility as immunity: Evidence from a public health event

Abstract

We investigate the relationship between the credibility of officially reported COVID-19 infection cases and the direct effects of the public health crisis on stock market performance. Employing the law of left digits, we estimate the likelihood of misreporting in official data to evaluate government reporting credibility (RC). A higher deviation from expected Benford’s distributions implies a greater likelihood of misreporting and lower RC. Our premise is that high credibility of government reporting during crisis mitigates the negative consequences of disasters through lowering investors’ risk aversion and bolstering their confidence. Our main results are highly consistent with this hypothesis. The positive influence of RC is particularly pronounced for companies situated in economies characterized by higher uncertainty and weaker governance before the crisis, and during periods of heightened market panic. Our findings suggest that the credibility of government reporting can act as immunity-like protection for stock markets in times of crisis.