When a journalist is assassinated, do financial markets care? The market’s reaction to journalist murders

Abstract

ABSTRACT Using comprehensive data on journalist assassinations around the world, we study the effect of journalist killings on stock returns. Our event study results show an average price drop of −0.46% following the murder of a journalist for companies headquartered in the country where the killing occurs. We find that killing a journalist who is an editor, lives locally, or works in television causes the most negative market reaction. In addition, when journalists are killed by military officials or tortured first, the stock prices of firms headquartered in that country declines by 4.63% and 3.01%, respectively.