We analyze the impact of Covid-19 on productivity using data from an innovative monthly firm survey that asks for quantitative impacts of Covid-19 on inputs and outputs. We find that total factor productivity (TFP) fell by up to 6% during 2020–2021. The overall impact combined large reductions in ‘within-firm’ productivity, with offsetting positive ‘between-firm’ effects as less productive sectors, and less productive firms within them, contracted. Despite these large pandemic effects, firms’ post-Covid forecasts imply surprisingly little lasting impact on aggregate TFP. We also see significant heterogeneity over firms and sectors, with the greatest impacts in those requiring extensive in-person activity.

We study how management practices shape export performance using matched production-trade-management data for Chinese and American firms and a randomized control trial in India. Better-managed firms are more likely to export, sell more products to more destinations, and earn higher export revenues and profits. They export higher-quality products at higher prices and lower quality-adjusted prices. They import a wider range of inputs and inputs of higher quality and price, from more advanced countries. We rationalize these patterns with a heterogeneous-firm model in which effective management improves performance by raising production efficiency and quality capacity.

We investigate the link between hospital performance and managerial education by collecting a large database of management practices and skills in hospitals across nine countries. We find that hospitals closer to universities offering both medical education and business education have lower mortality rates from acute myocardial infarction (heart attacks), better management practices, and more MBA-trained managers. This is true compared to the distance to universities that offer only business or medical education (or neither). We argue that supplying bundled medical and business education may be a channel through which universities improve management practices in hospitals and raise clinical performance.