The Zombification of the Economy? Assessing the Effectiveness of French Government Support During COVID-19 Lockdown

Guerini, Mattia; Nesta, Lionel; Ragot, Xavier; Schiavo, Stefano

The Zombification of the Economy? Assessing the Effectiveness of French Government Support During COVID-19 Lockdown

Mattia Guerini (), Lionel Nesta, Xavier Ragot and Stefano Schiavo
Additional contact information
Mattia Guerini: UniBs - Università degli Studi di Brescia = University of Brescia

SciencePo Working papers Main from HAL

Abstract: This paper evaluates the risk of zombification of the French economy during the sanitary crisis, as a result of the unconditional financial support provided to firms by public authorities. We develop a simple theoretical framework based on a partialequilibrium model to simulate the liquidity and solvency stress faced by a large panel of French firms and assess the impact of government support measures. Simulation results suggest that those policies helped healthy but illiquid firms to withstand the shock caused by the pandemic. Moreover, the analysis finds no evidence of a "zombification effect", as government support has not disproportionately benefited less productive companies.

Keywords: Covid-19; Zombie firms; Job-retention schemes; Microsimulation; Policy evaluation. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.univ-cotedazur.fr/hal-04288928
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.univ-cotedazur.fr/hal-04288928/document (application/pdf)

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

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:spmain:hal-04288928

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SciencePo Working papers Main from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Contact - Sciences Po Departement of Economics ().