Purpose: This paper empirically investigates the effect of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) on the Indian financial market and firm betas, perhaps the first paper to do so. The results will be helpful for investors tracking betas during future the coronavirus waves.Design/methodology/approach: A conditional capital asset pricing model (CAPM) and multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model is used to estimate time-varying daily betas of the 50 largest Indian stocks spread across 16 industries over five years (Nov 2017 to May 2021), including the two waves of COVID-19 in India.Findings: The results show that the betas increased during the COVID wave-1 (2020) but not during COVID wave-2 (2021). Moreover, the increase is more pronounced for consumer goods, infrastructure, insurance and information technology, unlike energy (oil and gas, power and mining) industries. Further, there are positive abnormal residual returns during the COVID waves. The results will be helpful for investors tracking betas during future COVID-19 waves.Originality/value: This is perhaps the first paper to study the firm betas in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A partial risk guarantee (PRG) is one of the critical instruments in the blended finance approach that provides partial assurance to the risk investor to lend leveraged capital to the borrower. Under the PRG scheme, philanthropic capital is employed as a risk guarantee to create financial and economic additionality through the multiplier effect. This study examines the current trends in PRG and blended finance ecosystem research. This study also aims to identify future research areas to work upon. The bibliometric analysis highlights the need and advantages of blended finance and PRG. The study highlights themes, such as climate finance, SDGs, impact investments, and blended finance/PRGs, from the literature on blended finance. This study illustrates the impact for researchers and managers regarding the future direction to undertake and the domains where PRG can work wonders. The research allows for a comprehensive view of the leading trends, such as utilising blended finance tools such as PRG in funding the work in climate financing, SDGs, water, sanitation, and impact investment. This is perhaps the first study to conduct a bibliometric analysis of the developing area of blended finance partial risk guarantee literature to highlight its importance and advantages.