COVID-19 and the resilience of European firms: The influence of pre-crisis productivity, digitalisation and growth performance

Mercedes Teruel, Sofia Amaral-Garcia, Peter Bauer, Alex Coad (), Clemens Domnick, Péter Harasztosi and Rozália Pál

No 2022/13, EIB Working Papers from European Investment Bank (EIB)

Abstract: We analyse how the COVID-19 crisis impacted firms' employment levels and digitalisation efforts differently depending on their pre-crisis productivity, digitalisation and growth performance. We match the EIB Investment Survey with firm-level financial statements from the ORBIS database for 27 EU Member States and the United Kingdom. Following the sales decline during the crisis, we show that: (1) Higher productivity firms are less prone to reduce the number of employees both in the short and in the long term; (2) High-growth enterprises are also less prone to reduce the number of employees in the long term; (3) Firms in highly digitalised sectors are less likely to reduce the number of employees; (4) Firms are more likely to increase their use of digital technologies, especially those that were already more digitalised before the crisis.

Keywords: HGE; labour productivity; digitalisation; COVID-19; Mercedes Teruel; Sofia Amaral-Garcia; Peter Bauer; Alex Coad; Clemens Domnick; Péter Harasztosi; Rozália Pál (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L22 O47 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-eec, nep-eff, nep-ent, nep-lma, nep-sbm and nep-tid
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:eibwps:202213

DOI: 10.2867/388751

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