Brexit and the Fintech Revolution in Europe : Lessons from the Bulgarian Digital Finance Cluster

This paper provides insights into the drivers of the resilience of the Fintech sector in Emerging Europe by analyzing the performance of 128 Bulgarian Fintech companies in the period 2000-2021. Our results show that larger and better capitalized Fintech companies which outsource their non-core activities and focus on their main competitive strengths tend to have higher operating income and profit. We also find substantial positive real-economy effects as these companies hire actively on the labor market to maintain their growth. The results are primarily driven by the post-Brexit period of 2016-2019. These results have important managerial and policy implications and provide interesting directions for future research