We use COVID-19 and sell-side analysts as an experiment to study the effects of gender on labor productivity. We find that the forecast accuracy of female analysts declined more than that of male analysts, especially when schools were closed and among analysts who were more likely to have young children, were inexperienced, were busier, or lived in southern states of the US. Relative to male analysts, females also reduced their forecast timeliness and resorted to more heuristic forecasts but did not reduce coverage or updating frequency. Relative to pre pandemic, female analysts’ careers were more negatively affected than male analysts’. Overall, our results show that the pandemic impacted female analysts more than males through the quality of their forecasts but not the quantity.

We examine whether mutual fund managers overestimate carbon risk when they are exposed to local air pollution. We find that air pollution near fund managers induces them to underweight stocks of high-emission firms. The effects strengthen among environmentally conscious fund managers and among those likely to be surprised by air pollution—consistent with the idea that managers revise their beliefs about carbon risk following exposure to air pollution. A firm’s carbon-emissions disclosures and fund managers’ sophistication moderate these effects. Carbon-intensive stocks sold by fund managers who are exposed to local air pollution subsequently outperform stocks they buy, suggesting that such underweighting is costly to fund investors.

This article examines the pricing of a firm’s carbon risk in the corporate bond market. Contrary to the “carbon risk premium” hypothesis, bonds of more carbon-intensive firms earn significantly lower returns. This effect cannot be explained by a comprehensive list of bond characteristics and exposure to known risk factors. Investigating sources of the low carbon alpha, we find the underperformance of bonds issued by carbon-intensive firms cannot be fully explained by divestment from institutional investors. Instead, our evidence is most consistent with investor underreaction to the predictability of carbon intensity for firm cash-flow news, creditworthiness, and environmental incidents.

This paper examines whether major corporate customers curb corporate carbon emissions along the supply chain. We show that suppliers with a more concentrated customer base have significantly lower carbon emissions. The results are robust to alternative measures of carbon emissions and customer concentration, alternative sample, alternative explanation, and various approaches to mitigate endogeneity concerns. The effect is more pronounced when major customers have made emission-reduction commitment, when they are exposed to greater climate regulatory shocks and risks, and when they become more concerned about regulatory scrutiny. Moreover, the curbing effect of major customers on supplier carbon emissions is stronger when customers have lower switching costs and stronger bargaining power over suppliers. We show that one way through which suppliers reduce emissions is by adopting green technologies. Our study highlights the role of major customers in facilitating the transition to a low-carbon economy through decarbonization along the supply chain.