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

Arbeitspapier

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.

Object Details

• ISBN: 978-92-861-5392-1
• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: EIB Working Papers ; No. 2022/13

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Firm Organization and Market Structure ; Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence
• Subject: HGE ; labour productivity ; digitalisation ; COVID-19 ; Mercedes Teruel ; Sofia Amaral-Garcia ; Peter Bauer ; Alex Coad ; Clemens Domnick ; Péter Harasztosi ; Rozália Pál

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Teruel, Mercedes ; Amaral-Garcia, Sofia ; Bauer, Péter ; Coad, Alexander ; Domnick, Clemens ; Harasztosi, Péter ; Pál, Rozália
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): European Investment Bank (EIB)
• (where): Luxembourg
• (when): 2022

Further information

• DOI: doi:10.2867/388751
• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/266387
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET