Maintaining economic output during COVID-19 pandemic can result in benefits for a firm's shareholders but comes at a potential cost to public health. Using novel retail store-level data, we examine how a CEO's political leanings, measured by political donations, impacts this tradeoff. We...

About 37% of Chinese listed firms have medical expertise, as measured by the existence of senior executives with a medical degree or medical-industry experience. Using the COVID-19 outbreak in China as a natural experiment, we find that stock returns of firms with medical expertise, excluding...