Cost of doing business during COVID-19: SME investment in public health compliance. ESRI Working Paper No. 701 May 2021.

In this paper, we use a novel survey module to consider investment in health-related expenditures by SMEs following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ireland. Using a unique dataset designed to capture expenditure on public health measures, we explore the heterogeneity in expenditure across firms and explore its determinants using traditional models. We find that 86 per cent of SMEs invested in health measures with a mean investment of =C15,500 and a median of =C3,500. Nearly all investment was financed by internal funds. Health investments are uncorrelated with economic performance and financial factors, in contrast to traditional models of investments. This highlights the random nature of the COVID-19 shock

New survey evidence on COVID-19 and Irish SMEs: Measuring the impact and policy response. ESRI Working Paper 698 April 2021.

In this paper, we use new survey data on the Irish SME population to trace out the impact of the pandemic on firms’ revenues, their capacity to adjust their cost base and their usage of policy supports. Between March and October 2020 over 70 per cent of firms experienced some fall in turnover with a median fall of 25 per cent compared to 2019. 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

Dynamics in European exports in times of crisis: the impact on growth at home and abroad

While the financial crisis of 2008-2009 led to the great collapse of international trade, the European debt crisis in 2010-2013 did not have such a drastic impact on trade. The collapse has been studied a lot in recent empirical literature, but the European debt crisis has not been investigated thoroughly yet. This paper looks into the impact of economic growth in European exporters and in their export destination markets on export performance as reflected in total export growth and growth in various export margins. Our findings point to an important role for both demand and supply side factors

Dynamics in European exports in times of crisis: the impact on growth at home and abroad

status: publishe

Services in the European Union: What Kinds of Regulatory Policies Enhance Productivity? World Bank Policy Research Working Paper Series, No. 7919.

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

The Cost of Data Protectionism: VoxEU.org

info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublishe

Do data policy restrictions impact the productivity performance of firms and industries?

This paper examines how policies regulating the cross-border movement and domestic use of electronic data on the internet impact the productivity of firms in sectors relying on electronic data. In doing so, we collect regulatory information on a group of developed economies and create an index that measures the regulatory restrictiveness of each country’s data policies. The index is based on observable policy measures that explicitly inhibit the cross-border movement and domestic use of data. Using cross-country firm-level and industry-level data, we analyse econometrically the extent to which these data regulations over time impact the productivity performance of downstream firms and industries respectively. We show that stricter data policies have a negative and significant impact on the performance of downstream firms in sectors reliant on electronic data. This adverse effect is stronger for countries with strong technology networks, for servicified firms, and holds for several robustness checks

Do data policy restrictions impact the productivity performance of firms and industries?

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe