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Addressing risks and pandemics at a country level is a complex task that requires transdisciplinary approaches. The paper aims to identify groups of the European Union countries characterized by a similar COVID-19 Resilience Index (CRI). Developed in the paper CRI index reflects the countries' COVID-19 risk and their readiness for a crisis situation, including a pandemic. Moreover, the study detects the factors that significantly differentiate the distinguished groups. According to our research, Bulgaria, Hungary, Malta, and Poland have the lowest COVID-19 Resilience Index score, with Croatia, Greece, Czechia, and Slovakia following close. At the same time, Ireland and Scandinavian countries occupy the top of the leader board, followed by Luxemburg. The Kruskal-Wallis test results indicate four COVID-19 risk indicators that significantly differentiate the countries in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the significant factors are not only COVID-19-related factors, i.e., the changes in residential human mobility, the stringency of anti-COVID-19 policy, but also strictly environmental factors, namely pollution and material footprint. It indicates that the most critical global environmental issues might be crucial in the phase of a future pandemic. Moreover, we detect eight readiness factors that significantly differentiate the analysed country groups. Among the significant factors are the economic indicators such as GDP per capita and labour markets, the governance indicators such as Rule of Law, Access to Information, Implementation and Adaptability measures, and social indicators such as Tertiary Attainment and Research, Innovation, and Infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to detect the differences in stock market performance between companies from the alternative energy sector and main stock market sectors in the first and second years of the COVID-19 pandemic. We used Global Industry Classification Standard to analyse eleven main stock market sectors and the alternative energy sector. Based on the one-factor variance analysis—ANOVA, we reveal the statistically significant differences between the analysed stock market sectors in both 2020 and 2021. The analysis implied that the performance of stock market companies during COVID-19 is sector-specific. Tukey's Honestly Significant Difference (HSD) test for pairwise comparison indicates that the alternative energy sector shows the most differentiation. Its average rate of return in 2020 is the highest and is significantly different for all eleven stock market sectors, while the top constituents from the conventional energy and financial sectors suffered the most. In 2021, a reverse trend in the stock prices can be observed. Companies from the conventional energy and financial sectors achieved the highest positive average weekly rates of return among all of the analysed stock market sectors, while the alternative energy sector performed significantly worse than the other sectors did. Nevertheless, throughout the entire analyses period of 2020–2021, the companies from the alternative energy sector turned out to be the biggest stock market beneficiaries. This study might imply that the COVID-19 pandemic has not hampered but has instead accelerated growing concerns about the environment and climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The outbreak and rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has hit the global financial markets, including the energy sector. Alternative energy belongs to the economy's key sectors concerning environmental issues and seems to be a full-fledged alternative for fossil-based conventional energy. This paper aims to assess the impact of COVID-19 on the stock market indices related to the alternative and conventional energy sector. We use daily data on the Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) Global Alternative Energy Index, the MSCI All Country World Index (ACWI) Energy Index, and self-developed Average-49 COVID-19 New Cases Index and Average-49 Stringency Index. The research covers the period January–October 2020. The average level of the MSCI Global Alternative Energy Index in COVID-19 year was more than a quarter higher than in 2019 while the MSCI ACWI Energy fell almost one-third in the same period. Based on the Markov-switching model, we show that both the MSCI Global Alternative Energy and the MSCI ACWI Energy are not significantly affected by the epidemic status. The analysed indices decline as the government anti-COVID-19 policy becomes more stringent, but the relationship is statistically significant only in the high-volatility regime. In comparison to the conventional energy index, we reveal that the alternative energy index stays most of its time in the low-volatility regime without being adversely and significantly affected by the COVID-19 related indicators. Our study shows that the alternative energy sector, represented by the MSCI Global Alternative Energy Index, seems to be more resistant to COVID-19 than the conventional energy sector. It might imply that the novel coronavirus pandemic has not depreciated but emphasised the growing concern about climate change and environmental pollution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]