The Value of Corporate Adaptation in Bad Times : Evidence from COVID Crisis Work-from-Home Announcements

We identify voluntary corporate work-from-home announcements during the COVID-19 crisis by scraping listed-company websites. Market reactions provide new information about the value and risk implications of corporate adaptation to crises. Event studies show three-to-five percent abnormal returns over five days following work-from-home announcement. Factor regressions establish significant declines in COVID-risk exposure relative to characteristic-matched samples. We conclude that markets actively processed information about corporate adaptation to COVID-19, beyond previous assessments of ex ante corporate susceptibility. We develop methodological extensions for clustered event windows, show faster market reaction to Bloomberg announcements, and confirm the work-from-home proxies that predicted early adaptation