Taylor Begley's paper (co-authored with Daniel Weagley), "Firm Finances and the Spread of COVID-19: Evidence from Nursing Homes" has been accepted by The Review of Corporate Finance Studies.
Abstract: We find that firms’ financial resources play an important role in mitigating the spread of COVID-19. We study nursing homes – whose residents account for over one-third of all U.S. COVID-19 deaths – at a time when investment in risk mitigation was costly and critical. Facilities with less liquidity and those experiencing more severe cash flow shocks had more cases of COVID-19. The importance of cash flow is further supported by tests exploiting state-level variation in Medicaid reimbursement expansion. Evidence on personal protective equipment supplies suggests a lack of financial resources leads to lower investment in risk mitigation.
