The Effects of Rising Terrorism on a Small Capital Market: Evidence from Tunisia

ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the impact of the rising terrorist threat on the performance of a small capitalization market – the Tunisian stock market-. Using an event study methodology as well as conditional volatility, we investigate the impact of recent terrorist attacks in Tunisia on the general index TUNINDEX and sector indices. Our main findings are as follows. First, we find that terrorist attacks negatively affect the Tunisian stock market. However, the decline – considerable in certain cases- is short-lived: the market recovers from terrorist shocks in one day. Second, Oil and Gas, Insurance and Telecommunications, are the most affected sectors. Third, different terrorist tactics have varied effects on the stock market that leads us to conclude that attack type, weapon type, target type, and severity of the attack may determine the market’s reactions.