<p>The financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic are exogenous shocks. Due to their different causes, the government interventions during these two shocks may affect corporate financial decisions in different mechanisms. According to real options theory, risk may not only erode firm value or but also increase firm value through corporate managers’ flexibility in investment decisions. This paper investigates how the financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic affect corporate risk-taking. We develop a model in which corporate risk-taking is a function of the two exogenous shocks and control variables. With a sample of 7,775 observations from 594 non-financial firms, we find that firms are less willing to engage in risk-taking over the financial crisis period but they are more willing to take risk during the Covid-19 period. Our additional analysis shows that these effects are stronger in financially constrained firms and non-state-owned firms. These understandings imply that policy makers should consider firms’ reactions thoroughly before they design and implement supporting policies during a shock. Besides, investors should analyze firms’ reactions to a crisis in order to make appropriate investment decisions. Our study’s limitations may be using period dummies to reflect exogenous shocks and measuring corporate risk-taking only by earnings volatility.</p>