IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/hig/fsight/v15y2021i4p42-51.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The COVID-19 Pandemic and Entrepreneurship in Germany

Author

Listed:
  • Michael Fritsch

    (Friedrich Schiller University Jena)

  • Maria Greve

    (Groningen University
    Friedrich Schiller University Jena)

  • Michael Wyrwich

    (Groningen University
    Friedrich Schiller University Jena)

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic severely affected not only incumbent firms, but also the emergence of start-ups. This paper investigates and analyzes the pandemic’s effect on new business formation, as well as business exits and insolvencies, in Germany. We find that the overall level of business registrations slightly decreased during the first year of the pandemic, but that the effect is specific to certain industries. Innovative manufacturing industries and technology-oriented services experienced an increase in the numbers of start-ups. High subsidies and a temporary suspension of important criteria obliging firms to declare insolvency weakened market selection resulting in fewer exits in 2020. The relaxation of insolvency regulations may lead to considerable numbers of ‘zombie’ firms. Generally, the pandemic re-enforced ongoing structural change, but also exerted specific effects that may be temporary in nature.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Fritsch & Maria Greve & Michael Wyrwich, 2021. "The COVID-19 Pandemic and Entrepreneurship in Germany," Foresight and STI Governance (Foresight-Russia till No. 3/2015), National Research University Higher School of Economics, vol. 15(4), pages 42-51.
    • Handle: RePEc:hig:fsight:v:15:y:2021:i:4:p:42-51
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://foresight-journal.hse.ru/data/2022/01/05/1776927817/5-Dvoulety-52-60.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rolf Sternberg & David Breitenbach, 2023. "Youth Entrepreneurship in Germany: Empirical Evidence on the How, the Why, the How Many, the Who and the When," Economies, MDPI, vol. 11(6), pages 1-30, June.
    2. Kay, Rosemarie & Kranzusch, Peter & Nielen, Sebastian, 2022. "Auswirkungen der Corona-Pandemie auf das gewerbliche Gründungsgeschehen 2020: Eine regionale Analyse," Daten und Fakten 29, Institut für Mittelstandsforschung (IfM) Bonn.
    3. Aleksandra Lapko & Ewa Hacia, 2021. "Nautical Tourism During the COVID-19 Pandemic in the Opinion of German Sailors," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(4), pages 475-485.
    4. Albert, Christoph & Caggese, Andrea & González, Beatriz & Martin-Sanchez, Victor, 2023. "Income inequality and entrepreneurship: Lessons from the 2020 COVID-19 recession," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    5. Jessica Birkholz & Jarina Kühn & Mariia Shkolnykova, 2022. "Exploration or Exploitation: Innovation Behavior of SMEs and Large Firms during the COVID-19 Crisis," Bremen Papers on Economics & Innovation 2203, University of Bremen, Faculty of Business Studies and Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    COVID-19; entrepreneurship; new business formation; hi-tech sectors; Germany;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L26 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Entrepreneurship
    • O52 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Europe
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hig:fsight:v:15:y:2021:i:4:p:42-51. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Nataliya Gavrilicheva or Mikhail Salazkin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/hsecoru.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.