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In March 2020, we witnessed enormous turbulence in the global markets caused by the escalation of problems related to the new medical phenomenon of coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. High fluctuations of indices were observed during the pandemic, but the crisis caused by fighting the virus was also reflected in firms’ essentials. The uncertainty provoked by the pandemic in the real economy also influenced listed companies. Some of them were forced to restrict or cease their operations temporarily. One of the impacts that this caused relatively quickly was on dividend decisions. Listed companies that had paid dividends for many years faced a difficult decision on whether they should still pay them or instead restrict or cease issuing dividends. The purpose of such actions would be to build a capital and liquidity buffer.

The implied volatilities are prospective estimates which reflect future expectations about underlying asset volatility. The implied volatility can be seen as the market participants’ assessment of the uncertainty of the underlying asset. Implied volatilities are obtained by matching a set of market option prices with given strike price and time to maturity to those produced by Black-Scholes-Merton model (BSM model) using the same strike price and time to maturity. When the implied volatilities are plotted against various strike prices or different moneyness, one can obtain the implied volatility smile curve, while the pattern of implied volatilities across time to expiration is usually referred to as the term structure of implied volatilities.

Innovation has received more and more attention in the European Union since adoption of the Lisbon Strategy in 2000. In 2010 the European Commission 2010; European Council adopted a new strategy, Europe 2020, which stressed again the importance of innovations. Therefore it is important to evaluate the current level of the European Union Member States’ technological and economic development as well as its innovations impact on it. Innovation impact on economic development was analyzed by correlating various composite indices with GDP per capita indicator (Fagerberg & Srholec, 2008). The author proposes a conceptual model for economic development evaluation according to a world-system approach. The level of economic development can thus be identified by a system of indicators rather than single one (e.g. GDP per capita).