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...

In recent years, the issue of administrative burden on enterprises due to legislation has received much attention. Everywhere it is acknowledged that it is important to reduce and minimize this administrative burden as far as possible, because it hinders the development of enterprises and the...