In this ZEW short report, the authors analyze the websites of approximately 1.1 million German companies twice a week for references of the word "Corona" and corresponding synonyms. The identified text passages are then evaluated using AI text analysis models to determine the context of the...

After the outbreak of the COVID-19 crisis, the number of insolvency filings has reached a record low in 2020. However, industry sectors are affected differently. In the early phase of the COVID-19 crisis, the number of insolvencies in the service sector decreased most substantially. In the third...

In 2020, firms expected their innovation expenditures to decrease by about 2% in 2020 compared to 2019. This decline is much smaller than that in 2009 following the financial crisis, when innovation expenditures fell by 11%. However, smaller firms with 5 to 99 employees planned to cut their...