This paper analyzes the impact of government restrictions arising from the COVID-19 pandemic on stock returns of U.S. travel and leisure companies. We demonstrate that the stringency of government restrictions has a negative impact on stock returns even after controlling for the pandemic itself. Moreover, stock prices of travel and leisure firms with a smaller size, less tangibility, and higher cash reserves are more resilient to the COVID-19 related government restrictions. Restrictions have the highest impact on airlines, followed by travel and tourism and casinos and gambling sectors. Our empirical findings provide valuable policy implications for travel and leisure firm managers, financial investors, and policymakers.
Using a large sample of firms from 37 countries over the period of 2007–2015, we empirically analyse the impact of religion and national culture characteristics on the level of corporate risk-taking around the world and the channels through which this can take place. First, we initially observe that different religious backgrounds have different impacts on corporate risk-taking, these being negative for Catholic and Islamic-based countries and positive for firms in Protestant nations. Secondly, we observe that companies in countries with high scores of power distance, masculinity, individualism and long-term orientation tend to increase risk-taking while high levels of uncertainty avoidance moderates corporate risk-taking behavior. We also show results that in companies where institutional investors are the most relevant reference shareholder the influence of religion on corporate risk-taking is not felt, unlike when the main shareholder is an individual or a family.
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