What is it about?

Approximately 20% of people suffer from allergies caused by airborne pollen. This study examines whether high concentrations of pollen in the air influence the stock market volatility using commonly used GARCH-X models. We hypothesize that pollen, a biologically grounded physiological stressor, influences stock market volatility. The results show that elevated pollen exposure is associated with significantly lower conditional stock market volatility, although the impact is small on a daily level. The estimated relationship remains robust across alternative pollen measures, volatility specifications, distributional assumptions, and control sets.

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Why is it important?

Stock market volatility is one of the key inputs in financial decision-making. Being able to explain and find variables that can explain changes in volatility is thus important to understand the dynamics of the stock market.

Perspectives

This study is one of three papers in Ville's doctoral dissertation. As a personal note, the background of this study goes to a meeting our university organized for researchers interested in biodiversity research two or three years ago. At the time, I wasn't studying biodiversity, but attended the meeting anyways to seen what kind of work is done in our university. I was almost the only one from our business/economics faculty; most others where from natural sciences faculty. For me the eye-opening situation was when I heard about what our university had been doing for decades. They had collected a unique database measuring the airborne pollen on the rooftop on a daily basis. I immediately though that it could be interesting to study its impact on stock market. Naively I thought that nobody had thought about it before. Well, I was almost right. There are a handful of studies, but not many.

Professor Mika Vaihekoski
Turun Yliopisto

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Impact of airborne pollen on stock market volatility, Research in International Business and Finance, October 2026, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.ribaf.2026.103529.
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