The Covid-19 pandemic is an unprecedented shock that has required unique responses from many corporations. Understanding how they have responded is of first-order importance for the fields of corporate governance, corporate finance and stewardship. At the same time, the exogenous shock of the Covid-19 pandemic also provides a unique setting to study fundamental questions of corporate governance, for example, how ownership structures can affect the relationship and balancing of interests between shareholders and management, and by extension, company behaviour. While some insights begin to emerge, others will take time and depend on more complete data sets to become available, such as financial statements and governance records for 2020.

Such data typically comes from annual reports and proxy statements. US companies with a December 31 fiscal year hold their annual meetings in the spring. They typically file their annual reports by the end of March, but in 2019, some 30 percent of the 7,000 reports were filed in April and later. While firms also publish quarterly data, most release comprehensive annual data only 90 days after their fiscal year-end, so the earliest date that a large sample of data on US firms will be available is April 2021. These dates may be similar or even later for firms in other countries.

To provide a forum for scholars analysing corporate responses to the pandemic that are informed by comprehensive datasets, The European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI), in collaboration with the University of Oxford, the Review of Corporate Finance Studies (RCFS) and the Review of Financial Studies (RFS), organised an online workshop in June 2021 and is now convening a physical conference in 2022 on ‘Corporations and Covid-19’. The two events are part of a wider ECGI project funded by Norges Bank Investment Management.

Submissions

The organisers are now calling for submissions to the physical conference at the University of Oxford on 2 June ;Submissions of early draft or fully developed papers will be considered, provided that a full paper will be ready by the time of the ;Theoretical and empirical papers are ;

Note: Papers developed from proposals presented at the workshop are also eligible for ;Participation in the 2021 online workshop is not a requirement for participation in the 2022 physical conference nor does it guarantee participation in the physical

Dual Submission Policy (Journals)

In the submission to the physical conference, authors of fully developed papers should indicate if they wish their paper to be considered (at no fee) for publication by the RFS and/or RCFS under the Dual Submission Programme. This is a “no-fault” submission option: if the RFS or RCFS reviews the paper and rejects it, the authors may submit it to the same journal (or any other SFS journal) at a later date as if it was never submitted. For a paper to be considered under the dual submission option, it should not be under review at or under invited revision from any journal, including the RFS or RCFS until the author has been notified of the outcome of the dual submission process. The details of the dual submission programme may be found at:

Note that this is the first time a dual-submission option is offered for these two journals at the same conference. Hence, a clarification is in order. If authors choose the dual submission option for both journals, their papers will be considered separately by the editorial teams of these journals. If the paper is selected to proceed in the process in both journals, the authors will be able to choose which of the journals they wish to proceed with.

Deadline:

The deadline for submissions to this conference is Friday, 29 October 2021 (midnight CEST)