COVID-19 Deaths Cases Impact on Oil Prices: Probable Scenarios on Saudi Arabia Economy

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to discuss death cases on the World, exacerbated investor fears, uncertainties, and increased volatility of crude oil prices in financial markets. The reaction absorbed the epidemic gradually until January 22. Still, the market situation changed soon with a sharp drop in prices, and prices slowly recovered after that until June 14. The data of this research using an econometric model, the ARDL (Autoregressive Distributed Lag), according to the Gets methodology, using daily data, January 22 –June 14, 2020. Our ARDL shows, the death ratio has a significant negative effect on oil price dynamics. However, the death ratio has an indirect impact on volatility in Crude Oil prices. The findings show that the death toll of COVID-19 has a significant impact on oil prices in Saudi Arabia (KSA). However, the preliminary results mainly influence by the situation reported in the USA. When we assess the case outside the USA, and we see the positive effect of the COVID-19 death figures on oil prices, therefore, stress the amplification of death-related risks to the financial market and the real economy, caused by increased, policy-induced economic uncertainty in the United States.