Brand equity and the Covid-19 stock market crash: Evidence from U.S. listed firms

•Top brands mitigate the Covid-19 stock market crash.•Firms with top brands experience higher stock returns, lower systematic risk and lower idiosyncratic risk in the Covid-19 crash than other firms.•The panel data regression model and the analysis for endogeneity concern.•Our empirical result reveals that the impact of brand equity is independent, rather than dependent on corporate social responsibility. Brand equity has played an important role in firms’ stock performance, especially during the stock market crash provoked by Covid-19. Our manuscript investigates how brand equity impacts stock performance during the Covid-19 crash. Firms with top brands should be a particularly attractive "safe harbor" in the crash to investors since consumer loyalty and demand advantages brought by brand equity enable firms to retain stable cash flows and mitigate the macroeconomic shock. Based on U.S. listed firms, we find that firms with top brands experience higher stock returns, lower systematic risk and lower idiosyncratic risk in the Covid-19 crash than other firms. Moreover, our findings are used to distinguish the brand equity effect from the corporate social responsibility (CSR) effect on stock performance during the Covid-19 crash.