Unemployment News and Stock Market Returns: A Study on OECD Countries

Abstract

Unemployment is one of the major macroeconomic factors which has always been a big issue for an economy as it has a direct influence on living condition of citizens and is helpful in ensuring a sound and growing economic system. Based on logical concept it can be said that employment rate states the financial soundness of citizens, specifies their spending capacities, saving and investment behavior in real and financial assets; thus, related to stock market activities. Researchers decided to conduct the study on unemployment; only a factor of macro economy considering its significance in research area that has been started with a good number of studies done by different researchers based on different countries on different periods, but this study is different from previous studies from some point of views: 1) It will cover a huge number of countries with several economic classes; 2) This study will represent the relationship between unemployment and stock market returns of the countries under a single study which are significant from world perspective because of having power to influence the activities of other countries; 3) This study will help researchers, policy makers and learners to get a clear idea about the interrelationship among these two components over a wide range of countries together. The study will conduct on all the member countries (35 countries) of OECD and will use Panel Data analysis for the period of 2008 – 2017.