IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ptu/wpaper/o202003.html

The short-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Portuguese companies

Author

Listed:
  • Ana Sequeira
  • Cristina Manteu
  • Nuno Monteiro

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic and the necessary containment measures have caused a very severe shock on Portuguese businesses. This article uses the results of the Fast and Exceptional Enterprise Survey – COVID-19 (COVID-IREE) to characterise the short-term economic impact of the pandemic, in a context in which several support measures have been adopted by public authorities. The main results show a very significant decline in companies’ activity in the second quarter of 2020, with very adverse effects on their liquidity. Accommodation and food services stands out as the most affected sector. In this period, the impact on employment was relatively contained. However, there were marked declines in effectively working staff, albeit partially offset by remote work and alternate presence schemes in companies’ facilities. Finally, the survey reveals that companies in more fragile conditions were the ones that resorted the most to the support policy measures and that these measures played a very important role in safeguarding companies’ financial sustainability and preserving employment.

Suggested Citation

  • Ana Sequeira & Cristina Manteu & Nuno Monteiro, 2020. "The short-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Portuguese companies," Working Papers o202003, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.
    • Handle: RePEc:ptu:wpaper:o202003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bportugal.pt/sites/default/files/anexos/papers/op202003_eng.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Catherine Buffington & Carrie Dennis & Emin Dinlersoz & Lucia Foster & Shawn Klimek, 2020. "Measuring the Effect of COVID-19 on U.S. Small Businesses: The Small Business Pulse Survey," Working Papers 20-16, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    2. Alexander W. Bartik & Marianne Bertrand & Zoë B. Cullen & Edward L. Glaeser & Michael Luca & Christopher T. Stanton, 2020. "How Are Small Businesses Adjusting to COVID-19? Early Evidence from a Survey," NBER Working Papers 26989, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Lukas Buchheim & Jonas Dovern & Carla Krolage & Sebastian Link, 2020. "Firm-Level Expectations and Behavior in Response to the Covid-19 Crisis," CESifo Working Paper Series 8304, CESifo.
    4. John Eric Humphries & Christopher Neilson & Gabriel Ulyssea, 2020. "The evolving impacts of COVID-19 on small businesses since the CARES Act," Working Papers 2020-48, Princeton University. Economics Department..
    5. Jose Maria Barrero & Nicholas Bloom & Steven J. Davis, 2020. "COVID-19 Is Also a Reallocation Shock," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 51(2 (Summer), pages 329-383.
    6. Fairlie, Robert W, 2020. "The Impact of COVID-19 on Small Business Owners: Continued Losses and the Partial Rebound in May 2020," Santa Cruz Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt21f993s2, Department of Economics, UC Santa Cruz.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Maria de Fátima Oliveira & Pedro Reis, 2023. "Portuguese Agrifood Sector Resilience: An Analysis Using Structural Breaks Applied to International Trade," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 13(9), pages 1-22, August.
    2. repec:ptu:bdpart:e202102 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Sónia Félix & Pedro Dias Moreira & Nuno Silva, 2021. "On the measurement of Portuguese firms’ fixed operating costs," Economic Bulletin and Financial Stability Report Articles and Banco de Portugal Economic Studies, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.
    4. Valerija BOTRIĆ & Tanja BROZ, 2022. "Gender disparities in COVID-19 job losses across European post-transition economies," Eastern Journal of European Studies, Centre for European Studies, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, vol. 13, pages 160-184, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Betcherman,Gordon & Giannakopoulos,Nicholas & Laliotis,Ioannis & Pantelaiou,Ioanna & Testaverde,Mauro & Tzimas,Giannis, 2020. "Reacting Quickly and Protecting Jobs : The Short-Term Impacts of the COVID-19 Lockdown on the Greek Labor Market," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9356, The World Bank.
    2. Laura Alfaro & Oscar Becerra & Marcela Eslava, 2020. "EMEs and COVID-19: Shutting Down in a World of Informal and Tiny Firms," NBER Working Papers 27360, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Laura Alfaro & Oscar Becerra & Marcela Eslava, 2020. "EMEs and COVID-19 Shutting Down in a World of Informal and Tiny Firms Laura Alfaro, Oscar Becerra y Marcela Eslava," Documentos CEDE 18193, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    4. Cong, Lin William & Yang, Xiaohan & Zhang, Xiaobo, "undated". "SMEs Amidst the Pandemic and Reopening: Digital Edge and Transformation," Applied Economics and Policy Working Paper Series 317045, Cornell University, Department of Applied Economics and Management.
    5. Magdalena Olczyk & Marta Ewa Kuc-Czarnecka, 2021. "Determinants of COVID-19 Impact on the Private Sector: A Multi-Country Analysis Based on Survey Data," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(14), pages 1-17, July.
    6. Laura Alfaro & Oscar Becerra & Marcela Eslava, 2020. "Econom√≠as emergentes y COVID-19 Cierres en un mundo de empresas informales y pequenas," Documentos CEDE 18205, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    7. Humphries, John Eric & Neilson, Christopher A. & Ulyssea, Gabriel, 2020. "Information frictions and access to the Paycheck Protection Program," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 190(C).
    8. Alejandro Fernández-Cerezo & Beatriz Gonzalez & Mario Izquierdo Peinado & Enrique Moral-Benito, 2023. "Firm-level heterogeneity in the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 55(42), pages 4946-4974, September.
    9. Ting Zhang & Dan Gerlowski & Zoltan Acs, 2022. "Working from home: small business performance and the COVID-19 pandemic," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 58(2), pages 611-636, February.
    10. Blanas, Sotiris & Oikonomou, Rigas, 2023. "COVID-induced economic uncertainty, tasks and occupational demand," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    11. Lei Li & Philip E. Strahan & Song Zhang, 2020. "Banks as Lenders of First Resort: Evidence from the COVID-19 Crisis," NBER Working Papers 27256, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Bennedsen, Morten & Larsen, Birthe & Schmutte, Ian & Scur, Daniela, 2020. "Preserving job matches during the COVID-19 pandemic: firm-level evidence on the role of government aid," GLO Discussion Paper Series 588, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    13. Maksim Belitski & Christina Guenther & Alexander S. Kritikos & Roy Thurik, 2022. "Economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on entrepreneurship and small businesses," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 58(2), pages 593-609, February.
    14. Morikawa, Masayuki, 2021. "Productivity of firms using relief policies during the COVID-19 crisis," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    15. Buchheim Lukas & Krolage Carla & Link Sebastian, 2022. "Sudden stop: When did firms anticipate the potential consequences of COVID-19?," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 23(1), pages 79-119, February.
    16. Adjognon, Guigonan Serge & Bloem, Jeffrey R. & Sanoh, Aly, 2021. "The coronavirus pandemic and food security: Evidence from Mali," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    17. Fadinger, Harald & Schymik, Jan & Alipour, Jean-Victor, 2020. "My Home Is My Castle -- The Benefits of Working from Home During a Pandemic Crisis: Evidence from Germany," CEPR Discussion Papers 14871, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. Kazuyuki MOTOHASHI, 2021. "Productivity of Firms Using Relief Policies During the COVID-19 Crisis," Policy Discussion Papers 21006, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    19. Balleer, Almut & Link, Sebastian & Menkhoff, Manuel & Zorn, Peter, 2020. "Demand or Supply? Price Adjustment during the COVID-19 Pandemic," IZA Discussion Papers 13568, IZA Network @ LISER.
    20. Indervir Singh & Jagdeep Singh & Ashapurna Baruah, 2020. "Income and Employment Changes Under COVID-19 Lockdown: A Study of Urban Punjab," Millennial Asia, , vol. 11(3), pages 391-412, December.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D22 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
    • E65 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Studies of Particular Policy Episodes

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ptu:wpaper:o202003. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: DEE-NTD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bdpgvpt.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.