The Impact of Dividend Policy and the COVID-19 Pandemic on Stock Price Volatility

The purpose of this article is to examine how dividend policy and the COVID-19 pandemic impact stock price volatility in the Vietnamese stock market. Panel data regression method was performed on a data set of 402 companies in 9 industries in the period from 2010–2021. The results show that the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 has played a significant role not only in increasing stock price volatility, but dividend policy as well. The pandemic in 2021 has had an impact on reducing stock price volatility. Moreover, stock price volatility is also affected by the factors related to company characteristics such as the ratio of long-term debt to assets and company size. At the industry level, financial services and pharmaceuticals, and healthcare are the industries with the highest and lowest stock price volatility among the 9 research industries, respectively. Based on the research results, the article offers some implications for interested parties and participating in the Vietnamese stock market.