The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and pandemic-related policies on new firm creation: an analysis of the Italian case

Plain English Summary Disasters cause slowdowns in new firm creation that disaster recovery policies may aggravate or alleviate. Our analysis of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy reveals that this major disaster resulted in a large drop in new firm creation rates. During the first pandemic wave, the drop was concentrated in the regions where the pandemic was more severe. Examining the effects of the shutdown policies implemented to contain the spread of the disease and the measures designed to protect the economy provides useful guidelines for policymakers. First, we show that shutdown policies inhibit new firm creation. Policymakers can however alleviate this negative effect by implementing less strict measures in the areas not severely affected by the disaster. Second, despite we understand that policymakers need to provide relief to existing firms in the most affected industries to avoid business failures, we indicate they should simultaneously invest in stimulating demand in these industries to sustain also new firm creation. This work contributes to disaster research by exploring the impact on new firm creation of the COVID-19 pandemic and the pandemic-related policies. We develop hypotheses on the individual and combined effects of pandemic severity and public policies aimed at controlling the spread of the disease (shutdown policies) or protecting the economy from its negative consequences (demand stimulus and firm support policies). Then, we test these hypotheses using data on Italy in the first and second 2020 pandemic waves. Results show that pandemic severity negatively affected new firm creation during the first wave. Shutdown policies had negative effects too, especially in the regions where the pandemic was less severe. The effects of demand stimulus policies were positive and stronger the less severe the pandemic was while the impact of firm support policies was negative in the regions where the pandemic was more severe. All these effects vanished in the second wave.