Big data on job postings reveal multiple facets of the impact of COVID-19 on corporate hiring. Firms disproportionately cut new hiring for high-skill positions, with financially constrained firms reducing skilled hiring the most. Applying machine learning methods to job-ad texts, we find that firms have skewed their hiring toward operationally-core functions. New positions display greater flexibility regarding schedules and tasks. While job posting levels show signs of recovery starting in late-2020, changes to job descriptions and skill profiles persist through early-2022. Financial constraints amplify these changes, with constrained firms’ new hires witnessing greater adjustments to job roles and employment arrangements.

We show that the 2016 Brexit Referendum had multifaceted consequences for corporate America, shaping employment, investment, divestitures, R&D, and savings. The unexpected vote outcome led U.S. firms to cut jobs and investment within U.S. borders. Using establishment-level data, we document that these effects were modulated by the reversibility of capital and labor. American-based job destruction was particularly pronounced in industries with less skilled and more unionized workers. U.K.-exposed firms with less redeployable capital and high input-offshoring dependence cut investment the most. Data on the near universe of U.S. establishments also point to measurable, negative effects on establishment turnover (openings and closings). Our results demonstrate how foreign-born political uncertainty is transmitted across international borders, shaping domestic capital formation and labor allocation.

We show how uncertainty shapes corporate asset allocation, composition, and productivity using data from the shipping industry. Firms curtail both ship acquisitions and disposals when uncertainty increases, primarily through cuts in new ship orders and ship demolitions — decisions that are costlier to reverse vis-à-vis secondary market transactions. Uncertainty also prompts firms to concentrate their fleets into narrower, less productive portfolios. We corroborate our findings using the 2009–2011 spike in Somali pirate attacks as an uncertainty shock to shipping activity. Uncertainty hampers “creative destruction,” slowing both the adoption of innovation embodied in new capital and the disposal of old capital.

Ample literature builds on the notion that real estate values boost corporate secured borrowing (“collateral channel”). A comprehensive contract-level database allows us to observe the value, location, and end-use of firms’ real estate holdings in the US and all debts raised against those assets over the 2000–2017 period. Firms raise new debt following an increase in the value of their real estate but use unsecured rather than secured borrowing. We rationalize these findings with a model where firms’ choices between secured and unsecured debt reflect the systematic risk exposures of the assets on their balance sheets. While secured debt may be seen as a safer claim than unsecured debt contractually, we demonstrate that it can be riskier from an economic perspective. Our analysis adds new insight into how firms set their debt structure.