Firm Recovery during COVID-19 : Six Stylized Facts
Building on prior work that documented the impact of COVID-19 on firms in developing countries using the first wave of Business Pulse Surveys, this paper presents a new set of stylized facts on firm recovery, covering 65,000 observations in 38 coun...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2021
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/undefined/862851634563353449/Firm-Recovery-during-COVID-19-Six-Stylized-Facts http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36428 |
| Summary: | Building on prior work that
documented the impact of COVID-19 on firms in developing
countries using the first wave of Business Pulse Surveys,
this paper presents a new set of stylized facts on firm
recovery, covering 65,000 observations in 38 countries. This
paper suggests that: One, since the outset of the pandemic,
some aspects of business performance such as sales show
signs of partial recovery. Two, other aspects remain
challenging, including persistently high uncertainty and
financial fragility. Three, recovery is heterogeneous across
firms and more sensitive to firm-level attributes such as
size, sector, and initial productivity than to country-level
differences in the severity of the initial shock. In
particular, larger and more productive firms are recovering
faster, with implications for competition policy and
allocative efficiency. Four, the decline in jobs has been
steeper during the initial shock than the expansion in
employment during recovery, raising the risk of a
"jobless" recovery pattern. Five, the diffusion of
digital technology and product innovation accelerated during
the pandemic but did so unevenly, further widening gaps
between small and large firms. Six, businesses now have more
access to policy support, but poorer countries continue to
lag behind and appropriate targeting of firms remains a challenge. |
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