Two recent papers by Chair and Professor of UWest’s Business Administration Department, Dr. Bill Y. Chen, examine factors that affect the development of urbanization and the reasons why the U.S. stock markets have recovered so quickly from the pandemic crash.

In one paper, published in International Journal of Business and Economics, authored by Dr. Chen, Xingong Li, and Lianlian Lin, titled “The Successful Development of Urbanization and Urban Agglomerations,” Chen and his colleagues look at factors that affected the development of urbanization and urban agglomerations. The paper also explores the relationship between a city and an urban agglomeration, as well as how they could be successful together. Findings from the paper conclude “that a city’s ability to influence its adjoining areas is the essential function of its existence.”

The paper further finds that of the sixteen factors examined, innovation and sustainability are commonly agreed factors that directly lead to a city’s success. The article appears in the current October issue of IJBE (http://ijbe.ielas.org/index.php/ijbe/article/view/226).

A separate paper by Dr. Chen and Tzu-Ting (Patty) Hsu, a UWest Post-MBA program graduate, published in Universal Journal of Accounting and Finance, titled “Why US Stock Markets Have Recovered So Fast from the Pandemic Crash,” considers the reasons for the stock markets’ surprisingly swift recovery from the March 2020 crash that stemmed from the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Chen and Hsu study three independent variables and analyze data from the major U.S. stock indices to determine that vaccines and developments in medical treatment decisively affected stock market movement. Moreover, the data indicates that neither the number of infections nor deaths significantly influenced the stock indices.

That the paper accesses a longer time period—using weekly data as opposed to daily data—separates it from other similar studies. The correlation of economic and COVID-19 related medical development variables further distinguishes this study. In this light, Chen and Hsu’s paper “offers a comprehensive and new perspective on the dynamic of the US stock market that is valuable to both investors and policy-makers.”

This study is available at https://www.hrpub.org/download/20210930/UJAF8-12224527.pdf.