Future of work
A curated resource of recent research on trends shaping Canada's labour market.
This paper constructs a method to measure firm-level exposure to epidemic diseases by counting the number of times the disease is mentioned in the quarterly earnings conference call that public-listed firms host with financial analysts. The authors gathered data on the transcripts of these conference calls from January 2001 to March 2020 for 11,943 firms headquartered in 84 countries.
The results show that 40% of the transcripts discuss the COVID-19 outbreak, a much larger percentage than all previous outbreaks. Concerns raised related to supply chain disruption, fall in demand, employee welfare, closures, production capacity reduction, increased uncertainty and the financial market. The authors also find evidence that firms with experience in dealing with SARS or H1N1 have more positive expectations about their ability to deal with the coronavirus outbreak.