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46 J. Corp. L. 557 (2020-2021)
COVID-19 and Comparative Corporate Governance

handle is hein.journals/jcorl46 and id is 589 raw text is: COVID-19 and Comparative Corporate Governance Martin Gelter* & Julia M. Puaschunder** ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................... 558 I. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................ 558 II. COVID-19 AND ITS ECONOMIC IMPACT .................................................................... 562 A . C O VID -19 ........................................................................................................ 562 B. Economic Losses Resulting from COVID-19 ................................................... 563 C. Economic Shifts in the Wake of COVID-19...................................................... 566 III. COMPARATIVE CORPORATE GOVERNANCE: CRISIS AS A DETERMINANT AND ACCELERATOR OF LONG-TERM TRENDS ............................................................... 569 IV . THREE KEY COV ID-19 TRENDS............................................................................... 577 A. The Turn from Efficient to Resilient Structures ........................................... 578 1. Corporate Fat and the Agency Cost of Free Cash Flow ............................. 578 2. Relational Equity and Debt, and Corporate Embeddedness ....................... 585 3. Human Capital and the Value of a Healthy Labor Force ........................... 589 i. Building a Resilient Workforce ............................................................... 589 ii. Consequences for the Relationship Between Capital and Labor ........... 593 B. The Return of Nationalism in Corporate Governance ..................................... 595 C. The Return of Stakeholderism ...................................................................... 606 1. Inequality .................................................................................................... 606 2. Climate Change, Institutional Shareholder Stewardship, and Other Public Policy Goals.................................................................................... 613 3. Corporate Governance and the Social Compact ........................................ 622 V. COVID-19 AND THE EVOLUTION OF COMPARATIVE CORPORATE GOVERNANCE ...... 623 VI. CONCLUSION............................................................................................................. 627 Fordham University School of Law; Research Member, European Corporate Governance Institute. Columbia University; The New School, Department of Economics and The New School for Public Engagement. For helpful comments, we thank participants of a roundtable event of the alumni association of the Vienna Uni- versity of Technology, the 5th Annual Meeting of the French Association for Law and Economics (AFED), the Fordham Law School Faculty Workshop, the 16th Annual Conference of the Italian Society for Law and Eco- nomics (SIDE-ISLE), the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) 2021 Annual Meeting, as well as Mar- iana Pargendler, Elizabeth Pollman, Siegfried Sharma, Mathias Siems, Richard Squire, and Massimiliano Vatiero. We also thank Grace Lee and Steven Cotto for excellent research assistance.