Sudden stop: When did firms anticipate the potential consequences of COVID-19?

Abstract

COVID-19 hit firms by surprise. In a high frequency, representative panel of German firms, the business outlook declined and business uncertainty increased only at the time when the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic led to domestic policy changes: The announcement of nation-wide school closures on March 13 was followed by the largest change in business perceptions by far. In contrast, the data provides no evidence for the relevance of other potential sources of information on business perceptions: Firms did not learn from foreign policy measures, even if they relied on inputs from China or Italy. The local, county-level spread of COVID-19 cases affected expectations and uncertainty, albeit to a much lesser extent than the domestic policy changes.

Ensuring Sustainable Development in Light of Pandemic “New Normal” Influence

“…The prospects of achieving SDGs under the conditions of such a serious threat also evoked many doubts among respondents who participated in the questionnaire. Their estimations are mostly critical, reflecting the real economic and social shock experienced during the first waves of the pandemic, and this has been a main focus in the studies conducted by other researchers [5,[51][52][53][54][55]. Therefore, we can consider such measurements as empirically confirmed reactions to the massive risks, during which global goals often yield to personal needs.…”

“…The reasons for the low progress in this field, as stated by the head of the State Statistics Service of Ukraine and the UN and UNICEF representatives, are mostly connected with the pandemic [49] (pp. [3][4][5]. Simultaneously, we conducted a more detailed analysis of goal achievements, considering the tasks declared within each of the goals and targeted indicators for their performance (Table 4).…”

“…The economic shock period and sudden stop period substantially impacted the economic aspects of sustainable development. The business prospects' unpredictability was analyzed in light of factors, such as the uncertainty in the state administration actions during that period [5,6], the support from vulnerable governments to manage the COVID-19 crisis [7,8], and the provision of agile models of interaction in different domains [9,10], including employment, education, and other communications. The new wave of actuality has brought forth questions about the deficit in digital skills for employment [11,12], the employee risk management of different groups depending on the pandemic influence [13][14][15], employees' disengagement [16], and the stress caused by the new labor conditions [17], including technostress created by the momentary hyper digitalization of many processes [18][19][20].…”

From ‘I don’t like Mondays’ to ‘Friday I’m in love’ – day-of-the-week effects in business surveys

“…Including the participation date on the paper questionnaire was triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic (Buchheim, Krolage, and Link, 2022). The left panel of Figure 1 shows the number of firms in our sample where the participation date is available.…”

Management Practices and Resilience to Shocks: Evidence from COVID-19

“…For example, German firms updated business expectations twice: first, when there were increased restrictions in Northern Italy, and second, following the announcement of the German national lockdown(Buchheim, Krolage & Link 2022) 2 In Online Appendix A we give a detailed account of the spread of the pandemic in Italy and the measures adopted by the Italian government to counter its effects.…”