Identifying the impact of the business cycle on drug-related harms in European countries.

Background: The evidence resulting from the analysis of the association between economic fluctuations and their impact on the substance use is mixed and inconclusive. Effects can be pro-cyclical (drug-related harms are predicted to rise when economic conditions improve), counter-cyclical (drug-related harms are predicted to rise in bad economic times) or unrelated to business cycle conditions as different transmission mechanisms could operate simultaneously.

Methods: The main aim of this study is to assess, from a macroeconomic perspective, the impact of economic cycles on illegal drug-related harms in European countries over the 2000-2020 period.

The influence of extreme events such as Brexit and Covid-19 on equity markets.

In this article , we show that the result that the PIIGS group had the largest negative unadjusted and abnormal returns on the day following the Brexit Referendum is robust to taking into account jointly other extreme events such as the Covid-19. , we provide evidence that the impact of the declaration of Covid-19 to be a global pandemic by the WHO - when global markets fell by nearly 15% - had a total different reaction in the financial markets to the one following the Brexit Referendum, impacting more negatively in countries where quarantine lockdowns were announced that day (i.e.