The Impact of COVID-19 Outbreak on Business Sustainability and Financial Risk Analysis

Dear Colleagues,

The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which originated from Wuhan, spread quickly all over China as well as into many other countries, such as Singapore, Japan, and the U.S.A. By early February 2020, this highly epidemic sickness had caused thousands of confirmed cases and killed more than 1500 people in mainland China. In the past, three major countrywide outbreaks have occurred, namely the "Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome" (SARS) outbreak in 2003 in mainland China, the "Middle East Respiratory Syndrome" (MERS) outbreak in 2012 in Saudi Arabia, and the MERS outbreak in 2015 in South Korea. These outbreaks have resulted in more than 10,000 confirmed cases in total (de Wit et al., 2016). This kind of epidemic sickness can rapidly spread by a group of infectious agents through several methods of interactions, and threaten the health condition of a large number of people in a short time (Medina, 2018). As COVID-19 rapidly spread from China to other parts of the world, the impacts on public health, safety and security, businesses, transportation, and travel, and on the management of critical facilities and services have generated an urgent need for new, novel, relevant, interdisciplinary research.

The COVID-19 pandemic is likely to have a lasting impact on communities and the world's economy for months, if not years, to come. It is expected that this outbreak will have a more significant impact on the economies of China and the U.S.A. than the epidemic of SARS in 2003. While healthcare systems throughout the world scramble to combat this emergency, businesses, such as tourism, banking, hospitality, airlines, and restaurants, are being hit hard with the immediate impact. Many other companies, particularly manufacturing, are struggling to get back to their regular operation because of the strict cordoning-off policies implemented in many cities in China and all over the world. For those firms in operation, knowing how to ensure the safety of employees and provide the needed support in this challenging time are also enormous challenges. However, some of the first sectors of the economy to bear the brunt of this impact already are tourism, hospitality, banking, and travel, with key tourism cities around the world being hardest hit, while still being expected to lead the response to this crisis.

How have business entities (services and manufacturing industries, i.e., financial institutions and markets, hospitals, universities, airlines, cruise ships, airports, and other businesses) on the front lines responded to this crisis? How have communities implemented and managed quarantine and "red zones" to contain the disease? What lessons and resources need to be shared, and where are gaps and deficiencies in the response and recovery from COVID-19? What has been the impact of the disease on business sustainability and financial risk analysis? The potential topics of the collection will cover a wide set of issues dealing with the influence of COVID-19 on the global economy, international financial markets, and management practices. In particular, the scope of the Issue encompasses the impact of COVID-19 on companies, social development, people's lives, management practices, education, schools and universities, economy, and finance, as well as forecasting, prediction, and risk management techniques. Given the urgency and scale of the impact from the COVID-19 outbreak on China and the world’s businesses, this is the right moment for management scholars to practice responsible scholarship and contribute to society. 

In line with this, the Journal of Risk and Financial Management (JRFM) welcomes submissions in the form of viewpoints, research notes, case studies, literature reviews, and research articles for a Special Issue titled "The Impact of COVID-19 Outbreak on Business Sustainability and Financial Risk Analysis". The goal of the Special Session is to provide a forum for scholars, from both micro and macro management fields, to share management insights on the COVID-19 outbreak.

The specific topics of the special issue include (but are not limited to) the following:

• The impacts of the outbreak on firms, especially SME’s business sustainability and financial risk analysis
• COVID-19 and the stability of the financial system (asset markets, equity markets, commodity markets, monetary policy, banking sector, etc.)
• Firm's business strategies during and after the outbreak
• Big data-driven financial sector
• AI-based epidemic network analysis
• Estimating the risk of global economic costs of COVID-19
• MCDM models in the field of financial management
• IoT application in the financial sector
• Cloud-based framework for financial management
• How to facilitate virtual work from home and the financial sustainability of the education sector and universities?
• Social entrepreneurship in responding to the outbreak?

Dr. Rohail Hassan
Prof. Dr. Assunta Di Vaio
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Journal of Risk and Financial Management is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

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• Financial risk (modelling, calculation, simulation, forecasting, and assessment)
• COVID-19 impact on the economy, companies, and SMEs
• COVID-19 impact on finance and banking sector
• COVID-19 impact on education and universities
• Financial risk analysis
• IoT-based application
• Big data analytics
• Financial analytics
• Data mining
• Business sustainability and sustainable business practices
• Sustainable development goals
• Sustainable business model
• Economic sustainability
• Financial sector
• Universities
• Airlines
• Environmental sustainability