This paper assesses the prospects of a 2021 time bomb in small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) failures triggered by the generous support policies enacted during the 2020 COVID-19 crisis. Policies implemented in 2020, on their own, do not create a 2021 time bomb for SMEs. Rather, business...

This paper assesses the prospects of a 2021 time bomb in small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) failures triggered by the generous support policies enacted during the 2020 COVID-19 crisis. Policies implemented in 2020, on their own, do not create a 2021 time bomb for SMEs. Rather, business...

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected major industries, resulting in the transformation of the business landscape, and small businesses have taken a particularly severe impact. Whenever crises occur, micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) tend to be more vulnerable than large...

The first part of this article describes developments in the profitability, solvency and liquidity of Spanish non-financial corporations, drawing on the integrated CBSO database, which contains annual information up to 2019. This analysis evidences that, at end-2019, the corporate sector was in...

The COVID-19 pandemic caused an unprecedented collapse of the U.S. economy in late March 2020. The federal government scrambled to provide emergency financial support through a variety of hastily-assembled programs, such as PPP, but relief did not always go to where it was most needed. This...

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...