Empirical Evaluation of Stock Market Responses to Brent Oil Futures during the COVID-19 Pandemic and the Russo-Ukrainian Armed Conflict

This paper aims to analyze the evolution and correlation of important stock market indexes from the European Union, including from the energy sector against Brent Oil Futures during the most recent crises the economy has faced: the crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the one generated by Russia’s aggression on Ukraine. High volatility is found present based on the results of impulse response function, due to BRENT, in the pandemic and overlap (pandemic and war) periods. The lower level of variation decomposition of the variables analyzed, related to BRENT, during the war period compared to the overlap period could be explained by the fact that in the overlap period the economies confronted simultaneously two types of crises, a financial one generated by the pandemic and an energy one generated by the war in Ukraine and which was defined by Paolo Gentinoli as a “double-crisis” [1].