We conduct a country-level analysis with a sample of 44 countries to examine whether generalised social trust has an impact on the stock market reaction to government announcements of lockdown and reopening during the COVID-19 pandemic. We first conduct an event study to measure the global stock markets’ reaction to government announcements of lockdown and reopening, which is measured by each stock market's cumulative abnormal return. We then employ regression analysis to investigate the relationship between generalised social trust and the stock markets’ reaction to government announcements of lockdown and reopening. The results show that government announcement of lockdown had a significant negative influence on most of the stock markets, whereas the magnitude of the stock markets’ reaction to government announcement of reopening is relatively marginal, indicating a possible negative bias. Moreover, we find that generalised social trust is positively related to the stock markets’ reaction to government announcement of lockdown and negatively related to the stock markets’ reaction to government announcement of reopening.

我们对 44 个国家/地区的样本进行了国家层面的分析，以检验普遍的社会信任是否会影响股市对政府在 COVID-19 大流行期间宣布封锁和重新开放的反应。我们首先进行了一项事件研究，以衡量全球股市对政府宣布封锁和重新开放的反应，这是通过每个股市的累计异常回报来衡量的。然后，我们采用回归分析来调查普遍社会信任与股市对政府宣布封锁和重新开放的反应之间的关系。结果表明，政府宣布封锁对大多数股票市场产生了显着的负面影响，而股市对政府宣布重新开放的反应幅度相对较小，表明可能存在负面偏见。此外，我们发现广义社会信任与股市对政府宣布封锁的反应正相关，与股市对政府宣布重新开放的反应负相关。