Elections and Their Results’ Uncertainty: Did It Induce Herding Behaviour in Indian Stock Markets? A Quantile Regression Analysis for the 2024 Indian Parliamentary Elections

This empirical work investigates the Indian investors’ herding mentality in the stock markets throughout the 2024 general election period, that is, the pre-election period, during and post-election period, and the whole election period. In addition, the investigation extends to explore, in particular, if the election outcome uncertainty induced any herding in the Indian equity markets on the day of the counting and result announcements of the 2024 general elections. A series of cross-sectional absolute deviation (CSAD) models and the quantile regression framework are employed to determine the existence of investors’ herding throughout the study period. The findings of the CSAD models show no signs of investors’ herding in the Indian stock markets for the pre-election season, during and post-election period, and the whole election period. In addition, the quantile regression analysis results also corroborated with the CSAD results by exhibiting adverse herding behaviour throughout the 2024 general election period. Furthermore, the study identified key psychological, macroeconomic and global factors driving the herding behaviour. Among them, only the global factor, that is, the RCBOE:VIX m,t , reported a significant impact on the herding behaviour in the during and post-elections period and whole election periods at the quantile level of 95%. The study’s findings offer significant implications for market participants and market regulators regarding investment decision-making and policy formulation during seasons of political uncertainty.