Firm-level heterogeneity in the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic

This paper explores the heterogeneity across firms in the impact of and response to the COVID-19 shock. It relies on a survey conducted by Banco de Espana to 4,004 companies in November 2020 matched to very rich balance-sheet information on firm characteristics. According to our results, COVID-19 had a higher impact on the most vulnerable firms (small, young and less productive), and they also found more useful government policy support. Nonetheless, there were some exceptions: public loan guarantees had more difficulties reaching firms with less pre-existing debt; and furlough schemes were not able to fully protect jobs in firms with a higher share of temporary workers, which find firing more useful. While uncertainty is the key factor hindering firms' activity, we use the announcement of the Pfizer vaccine on November 9th 2020 as a natural experiment to provide evidence that the vaccine announcement improved significantly firms' subjective recovery expectations. This points at the importance of the communication of medical advances to guide firms' expectations in pandemic episodes.