SME Failures Under Large Liquidity Shocks: an Application to the Covid-19 Crisis
研究了金融摩擦如何导致中小企业在大型流动性冲击下倒闭，利用11个欧洲国家数据，发现若无政府支持，新冠疫情将使中小企业倒闭率上升6.01个百分点，危及3.1%的就业。
Abstract We study the effects of financial frictions on firm exit when firms face large liquidity shocks. We develop a simple model of firm cost-minimization, where firms’ borrowing capacity to smooth temporary shocks to liquidity is limited. In this framework, firm exit arises from the interaction between this financial friction and fluctuations in cash flow due to aggregate and sectoral changes in demand conditions, as well as more traditional shocks to productivity. To evaluate the implications of our model, we use firm level data on small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in 11 European countries. We confirm that our framework is consistent with official failure rates in 2017–2019, a period characterized by standard business cycle fluctuations. To capture a large liquidity shock, we apply our framework to the COVID-19 crisis. We find that, absent government support, SME failure rates would have increased by 6.01 percentage points, putting 3.1% of employment at risk. Our results also show that in the presence of financial frictions and in the absence of government support, the firms failing due to COVID have similar productivity and growth to firms that survive COVID.