After fitting a topic model to 40,927 COVID-19-related paragraphs in 3,581 earnings calls over the period January 22 to April 30, 2020, we obtain firm-level measures of exposure and response related to COVID-19 for 2,894 U.S. firms.
We show that despite the large negative impact of COVID-19 on their operations, firms with a strong corporate culture outperform their peers without a strong culture. Moreover, these firms are more likely to support their community, embrace digital transformation, and develop new products than those peers. We conclude that corporate culture is an intangible asset designed to meet unforeseen contingencies as they arise.
We develop a model in which there are firms and employees who care about profit-sacrificing higher purpose (HP) and those who do not. Firms and employees...
This paper studies optimal executive pay when the CEO is concerned about fairness: if his wage falls below a perceived fair share of output, the CEO...