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We summarize and synthesize the results of the articles in this symposium issue on research in financial economics related to the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that the articles, taken together, present evidence that the pandemic resulted in a distributional shock to capital allocation. The underlying mechanisms include accelerating technological shifts, government stimulus programs, and heterogeneous responses of investors and firms. We augment these articles with evidence on the heterogeneous effects of the pandemic on profitability, payout, investment, employment, and productivity across sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the relation between electoral politics and government small-business lending, employment, and business formation. We construct novel measures of electoral importance capturing swing and base voters using data from Facebook ad spending, independent political expenditures, the Cook Political Report, and campaign contributions. We find that businesses in electorally important states, districts, and sectors receive more loans following the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, controlling for funding demand and both health and economic conditions. Estimates from survey and observational data show that electoral politics and the allocation of government funds affect employment, small-business activity, and business applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using hand-collected data on financial asset portfolios and exploiting the 2014 oil price crisis as an exogenous cash flow shock, we investigate financial risk-taking at distressed firms. We find that distressed firms, with high debt rollover risk proxied for by short-term liabilities, substantially increase their investments in risky financial assets, including corporate debt, equity, and mortgage-backed securities. The effects are stronger for unhedged firms with low collateral assets. Overall, we provide new evidence that distressed firms take risk using financial assets camouflaged as cash reserves, which, compared to real assets, are less visible and carry lower transaction costs and accelerated payoffs. (JEL G32, G34) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disagreement, a key factor inducing trading, has been receiving ever increasing attention in recent years. Most research has focused on disagreement about the expected returns. Several authors have shown that if the average belief coincides with the true expected return, in the portfolio context prices are unaffected by disagreement. In this paper we study the pricing effects of disagreement about return variances. We show that i) disagreement about variances has systematic and significant pricing effects--more disagreement leads to higher prices, and ii) prices are very sensitive to the degree of disagreement: Even if the average belief about the variance is constant, tiny fluctuations in the disagreement about the variance lead to substantial price fluctuations. This second result may offer an explanation for the excess volatility puzzle: When small changes in the degree of disagreement occur, they induce relatively large price changes. Yet, the changes in disagreement may be hard to directly detect empirically, leading to apparent "excess volatility." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]