This article examines institutional and cultural determinants of the speed of government responses during the COVID-19 pandemic. We define the speed as the marginal rate of stringency index change. Based on cross-country data, we find that collectivism is associated with higher speed of government response. We also find a moderating role of trust in government, i.e., the association of individualism-collectivism on speed is stronger in countries with higher levels of trust in government. We do not find significant predictive power of democracy, media freedom and power distance on the speed of government responses.

No abstract

Using the sample of listed private firms in China from 1999 to 2019, We examine the relation between the regional dialect diversity and corporate cash holdings. The main finding reveals that firms in higher dialect diversity city hoard more cashes. More importantly, further analyses indicate that the positive relation between dialect diversity and cash holdings are more pronounced among financing constrained firms. Overall, we find evidence in favor of precautionary savings motive predicts that firms located in city with higher dialect diversity will hoard more cash to compensate for reduced access to capital markets.