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Publications
Publications
  • Spring 2021
  • Article
  • Journal of Applied Corporate Finance

Corporate Resilience and Response During COVID-19

By: Alex Cheema-Fox, Bridget LaPerla, George Serafeim and Hui (Stacie) Wang
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Abstract

The coronavirus pandemic caused a sharp market decline while raising heterogeneous responses across companies related to their employees, supply chain, and repurposing of operations to provide needed products and services. We study whether during the 2020 COVID-19 induced market crash, investors differentiated across companies based on their human capital, supply chain, and products and service response. Using data derived from natural language processing applied to news coverage of corporate responses to the coronavirus crisis for 3,023 companies around the world, we find that more positive sentiment around a company’s response is associated with less negative returns. This is especially true for companies with more salient responses and in industries that those responses are more likely to represent a credible commitment to their stakeholders.

Keywords

ESG; COVID-19; Coronavirus; Crisis Response Plans; Crisis; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; ESG Ratings; Leadership & Corporate Accountability; Big Data; Machine Learning; Investor Behavior; Institutional Investors; Corporate Performance; Health Pandemics; Crisis Management; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Human Capital; Supply Chain; Operations; Leadership; Corporate Accountability; Institutional Investing; Performance

Citation

Cheema-Fox, Alex, Bridget LaPerla, George Serafeim, and Hui (Stacie) Wang. "Corporate Resilience and Response During COVID-19." Journal of Applied Corporate Finance 33, no. 2 (Spring 2021): 24–40.
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About The Author

George Serafeim

Accounting and Management
→More Publications

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More from the Authors
  • Vytal: Packaging-as-a-Service By: George Serafeim, Michael W. Toffel and Stacy Straaberg
  • Northvolt: Building Batteries to Fight Climate Change (B) By: George Serafeim, Debora L. Spar, Peter Tufano, Hugo Etchegoyhen and Emilie Billaud
  • Climate Solutions, Transition Risk, and Stock Returns By: Shirley Lu, Edward J. Riedl, Simon Xu and George Serafeim
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