Political Instability and Herding Behaviour: Evidence from Egypt’s Stock Market

Abstract

This article examines the existence of herding behaviour in the Egyptian stock market during the 2011 revolution period. Using daily and monthly data, we test for the existence of herding for the whole period, as well as for the pre- and post-revolution phases. For the whole period, our results fail to provide evidence of herding behaviour in the Egyptian stock market, but do provide evidence of adverse herding behaviour that exhibits non-linearity. The results also fail to provide evidence of herding behaviour during bull and bear markets, and show that herding behaviour is a short-lived phenomenon. When the pre- and post-revolution phases are considered separately, the results provide evidence of weak adverse herding for both phases and of adverse herding in bullish markets, but they are inconclusive regarding bearish markets.