New Survey Evidence on COVID-19 and Irish SMEs: Measuring the Impact and Policy Response

Conor O'Toole, Fergal McCann, Martina Lawless, Janez Kren and John McQuinn
Additional contact information
Fergal McCann: Central Bank of Ireland
Janez Kren: ESRI
John McQuinn: Central Bank of Ireland

The Economic and Social Review, 2021, vol. 52, issue 2, 107-138

Abstract: In this paper, we use new survey data on the Irish SME population to trace out the impact of the pandemic on revenues, firms’ capacity to adjust their cost base and their usage of policy supports. Over 70 per cent of firms experienced some fall in turnover with a median fall of 25 per cent. The impact of the shock appears uncorrelated with past firm performance which highlights its exogenous nature. Expenditure fell by 8.5 per cent on average with 40 per cent of firms cutting spending. Losses were incurred in over 30 per cent of enterprises with a further 30 per cent just breaking even. We find that about 61 per cent of SMEs received wage subsidies, 20 per cent of firms used tax warehousing while fewer than 6 per cent of firms used lending initiatives. Policy support take-up is more likely among those more affected by the downturn, while the smallest firms appear less likely to use support than larger firms.

Keywords: COVID-19; SMEs; Ireland (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.esr.ie/article/view/1695/573 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: New Survey Evidence on COVID-19 and Irish SMEs: Measuring the Impact and Policy Response (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eso:journl:v:52:y:2021:i:2:p:107-138

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Economic and Social Review from Economic and Social Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Aedin Doris ().