We study the impact of political relations on media coverage. Using a sample of 3,290 American Depository Receipts (ADRs) from 45 countries, we find that deteriorating political relations between the US and an ADR firm's home country induce negative coverage by the US media of the ADR firm. To alleviate endogeneity, we adopt France's and Germany's opposition to the Iraq War and the inauguration of the US president as two shocks to bilateral political relations between the US and foreign countries. In placebo tests, we show no negative effect of political relations on ADR firms’ press releases or non-US media coverage. We further document the three economic mechanisms underlying the impact of political relations on media coverage: US journalists’ country sentiment, a country's popularity among US readers, and the US media's political beliefs. Finally, we document two consequences of negative coverage by the US media: investors respond less to negative news of firms from countries with deteriorating political relations with the US, and negative coverage leads to a greater likelihood of firms terminating their ADRs.

This article proposes an innovative method to assess borrowers’ creditworthiness in consumer credit markets by conducting machine-learning-based analyses on real-time video information that records borrowers’ behavior during the loan application process. We find that the extent of borrowers’ micro-facial expressions of happiness is negatively associated with loan delinquency likelihood, while the degree of fear expressions is positively associated with delinquency risk. These results are consistent with two economic channels relating to the adequacy and uncertainty of borrowers’ future income, drawn from the extant psychology and economics literature. Our study provides important practical implications for fintech lenders and policymakers.