Large-scale fisheries during the COVID-19 pandemic: The case of the oceangoing groundfish fleet in Norway.

Small-scale fisheries have received most of the attention in the literature investigating negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on seafood production. Larger fishing vessels are often perceived to be more resilient as they are better able to alter harvest patterns in response to supply shocks than smaller, less mobile vessels. In addition, larger fishing vessels often deliver storable frozen products contributing to resiliency. The supply and demand shocks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic provides an opportunity to test this hypothesis and is investigated here on the large-scale groundfish fleet in Norway. The results indicate that during the first two whole years of the pandemic the impact on price was small, but also that there were several secondary effects showing how negative shocks in some supply chains/markets are overcome.

Are environmentally friendly firms more vulnerable during the COVID-19 pandemic?

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected supply and demand to a large extent. Declining demand for firms' output has caused significant financial stress for all kinds of firms worldwide. Production that requires environmental measures usually gets constrained when firms, especially small and medium-sized firms (SMEs), have difficulty in accessing credit. Firms thus face the dilemma of whether to continue environmental behaviors or to fulfill financial commitments to suppliers, employees, and so on. As such, an empirical question is whether the economic consequences of COVID-19 vary by firms' types and their environmental behaviors. Using 4,888 sample firms from 14 EU member states, this study finds evidence that the severity of damage caused by COVID-19 depends on firm size and whether firms invested in pollution abatement techniques. Specifically, eco-friendly firms perform better during the COVID-19 pandemic, and SMEs are less vulnerable than large firms. In particular, eco-friendly SMEs are less affected by the pandemic than conventional SMEs and large firms. These findings are probably related to the efficacy of government relief programs targeted to eco-friendly SMEs and/or the healthy financial status of these firms prior to the pandemic.

Credit constraints and the severity of COVID-19 impact: Empirical evidence from enterprise surveys.

The COVID-19 pandemic decreases firm revenue and raises the demand for liquidity, resulting in increased financial stress for firms throughout the world. In attempts to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 crisis, governments have established a range of credit programs to provide credit to firms with poor liquidity. However, the efficacy of those relief programs has been low, and the relief funds do not reach the businesses most in need of liquidity injection, indicating a need to identify firms that are the most vulnerable during the crisis. We first combine the standard Enterprises Surveys and the follow-up surveys on the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. The sample firms are used to test how credit constraint conditions and firm characteristics affect the severity of the COVID-19 impact on firm performance. Our empirical results indicate that small firms and firms with limited access to finance are more likely to be severely affected by the crisis. Firms with foreign ownership and that are located in small cities are less at-risk. Compared to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, COVID-19 less severely affects credit-constrained firms and foreign-owned firms and more severely affects small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).