Are Disclosures of Pandemics as a Source of Risk Informative?

Zoom Research Seminar

Miniature figures look at a stock price

Past event — 9 June 2021
12:0013:00 

English
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Keno Theile

PhD Candidate

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Abstract

Authors: Keno Theile (KLU), Prof. Dr. Kai Hoberg (KLU), Prof. Vinod R. Singhal, Ph.D (Georgia Institute of Technology)

The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the most severe supply chain disruptions in the past decades. In this paper, we estimate the impact of COVID-19 on firms’ equity risk. Equity risk is measured by the standard deviation of daily stock returns. By using natural language processing, we identified a sample of 792 US-headquartered publicly traded firms that disclosed pandemics as a risk factor in their 2019 10-K reports. Our analysis finds evidence that firms disclosing pandemics as a source of risk experience a median abnormal increase in equity risk between 6.18% and 10.02% due to COVID-19. Further, we find that the change in firm-specific risk drives the change in equity risk. High liquidity reduces the abnormal change in equity risk, but the extent of international sales has no impact on abnormal change in equity risk.

Bio

Keno Theile joined Kühne Logistics University in August 2019 as a PhD candidate under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Kai Hoberg. He received his Master’s degree with distinction from the Technical University of Hamburg in Industrial engineering, focused on logistics and supply chain risk management. Within this period, he spent a semester abroad at Denmark’s Technical University in Copenhagen. In 2014, he received his Bachelor of Engineering degree in mechatronics engineering from the Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University while being employed by the Daimler AG. Between his academic studies, he gained over three years of professional experience at the Mercedes Benz plants Sindelfingen and Bremen in supply chain management. With responsibilities for supplier quality and as a process and quality management auditor with international workplaces in Europe and Asia, he developed a broad practical knowledge of supply chain management.

 

Organizer

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Bärbel Wegener

Assistant to Resident Faculty