We estimate the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on business failures among small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) in seventeen countries using a large representative firm-level database. We use a simple model of firm cost minimization and measure each firm’s liquidity shortfall during and...

We estimate the impact of COVID-19 on business failures for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) using firm-level data in seventeen countries. Absent government support, the failure rate of SMEs would have increased by 9.1 percentage points, representing 4.6 percent of private sector...

We estimate the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on business failures among small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) in seventeen countries using a large representative firm-level database. We use a simple model of firm cost-minimization and measure each firm's liquidity shortfall during and after...

This paper considers different approaches to modelling the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic/lockdown shocks. We review different modelling strategies and argue that, given the nature of the bottom-up recession caused by the pandemic/lockdowns, simulation models of the shocks should be...

We consider several economic uncertainty indicators for the United States and the UK before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: implied stock market volatility, newspaper-based economic policy uncertainty, twitter chatter about economic uncertainty, subjective uncertainty about future business...

Front -- Contents -- Introduction -- Austere ideas for austere societies from Aristotle to Aquinas -- Austerity v. reason from Mandeville to Voltaire -- Austerity for capitalism from Smith to Weber -- Austerity for stability from the Great War to the next -- Austerity can wait Keynes --...