We estimate a model of damage to corporate earnings from COVID-19. An unexpected pandemic lowers current earnings due to costly mitigation and reduces growth rates. Damage depends on the expected arrival of a vaccine that reverts earnings to normal. Using this model, we infer from analysts'...

We estimate a model of damage to corporate earnings from COVID-19. A pandemic decreases earnings due to costly mitigation and lower growth rates. The arrival of a vaccine, modeled as a Poisson process, reverts earnings to normal. We fit our model to timely measures of expected damage given by...

This paper studies how hedge fund activism impacts corporate innovation. Firms targeted by activists improve their innovation efficiency over the five-year period following hedge fund intervention. Despite a tightening in R&D expenditures, target firms increase innovation output, as measured by...