German financial state aid during Covid-19 pandemic: Higher impact among digitalized self-employed

In response to strong revenue and income losses facing a large share of self-employed individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic, the German federal government introduced a €50bn emergency-aid program. Based on real-time online-survey data comprising more than 20,000 observations, we analyze the impact of this program on the confidence to survive the crisis. We investigate how the digitalization level of self-employed individuals influences the program's effectiveness. Employing propensity score matching, we find that the emergency-aid program had only moderately positive effects on the confidence of self-employed to survive the crisis. However, self-employed whose businesses were highly digitalized, benefitted much more from the state aid than those whose businesses were less digitalized. This only holds true for those self-employed, who started the digitalization processes already before the crisis. Taking a regional perspective, we find suggestive evidence that the quality of the regional broadband infrastructure matters in the sense that it increases the effectiveness of the emergency-aid program. Our findings show the interplay between governmental support programs, the digitalization levels of entrepreneurs, and the regional digital infrastructure. The study helps public policy to improve the impact of crisis-related policy instruments, ultimately increasing the resilience of small firms in times of crises. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on entrepreneurship and small businesses

Plain English Summary Responding to COVID-19 involves not just shielding small business jobs, supporting entrepreneurship, and raising government debt but also creating productive entrepreneurship and resilient location-specific entrepreneurial ecosystems. The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented challenge for small businesses that also brings new market opportunities. The papers in this special issue of Small Business Economics Journal aim to shed light on the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic by looking at the macro- and microeconomic effects on entrepreneurship and small businesses as well as the role of financial support policies and well-being in both developed and developing countries. Future research should focus on the role of digitization and financial mechanisms supporting small businesses during crises. The existential threat to small businesses, based on their crucial role in the economy, is behind the plethora of scholarly studies in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Examining the 15 contributions of the special issue on the "Economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on entrepreneurship and small businesses," the paper comprises four parts: a systematic review of the literature on the effect on entrepreneurship and small businesses;a discussion of four literature strands based on this review;an overview of the contributions in this special issue;and some ideas for post-pandemic economic research.