FAMILY FIRMS: COVID-19 CHALLENGES AND FUTURE OUTLOOK

The COVID-19 pandemic endangered the survival of many firms and emphasized the need to reevaluate corporate strategy. This paper studies the impact of the pandemic on family businesses and how it changed their strategy, priorities, and outlook. We use data from the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Family Business Survey 2021 that covers 2,801 family firms in 87 countries. Our study highlights some of the challenges family businesses faced during the pandemic and the need for an updated blueprint to ensure their long-lasting success. The survey draws attention to the financial resilience of family businesses and their unique advantages in terms of reputation and trust. However, it also underscores the need for family firms to adopt a more focused environment, social and governance (ESG) agenda, and to invest in technological transformation. The paper analyzes the congruity between academic research and CEO responses and forms a bridge between the academic literature on family firms and the real-world surveys of CEOs of family businesses conducted by PwC.

Estimation of Domain Means from Business Surveys in the Presence of Stratum Jumpers and Nonresponse

Misclassified frame records (also called stratum jumpers) and low response rates are characteristic for business surveys. In the context of estimation of the domain parameters, jumpers may contribute to extreme variation in sample weights and skewed sampling distributions of the estimators, especially for domains with a small number of observations. There is limited literature about the extent to which these problems may affect the performance of the ratio estimators with nonresponse-adjusted weights. To address this gap, we designed a simulation study to explore the properties of the Horvitz-Thompson type ratio estimators, with and without smoothing of the weights, under different scenarios. The ratio estimator with propensity-adjusted weights showed satisfactory performance in all scenarios with a high response rate. For scenarios with a low response rate, the performance of this estimator improved with an increase in the proportion of jumpers in the domain. The smoothed estimators that we studied performed well in scenarios with non-informative weights, but can become markedly biased when the weights are informative, irrespective of response rate. We also studied the performance of the ’doubled half’ bootstrap method for variance estimation. We illustrated an application of the methods in a real business survey.

Is the German Mittelstand more resistant to crises?

In a globalized world with high international factor mobility, crises often spread quickly over large parts of the world. Politicians carry a vital interest in keeping crises as small and short as possible. Against this background we study whether the type of company of owner-managed SMEs, in Germany well-known as Mittelstand firms, helps increasing an economy’s crisis resistance. We study this issue at the example of the Great Recession of the years 2008/2009. Using micro panel data from the ifo Business Survey, we study the comparative performance of Mittelstand enterprises and find supporting evidence for the hypothesis that Mittelstand firms performed more stable throughout the Great Recession than non-Mittelstand firms. We also show that owner-managed SMEs performed significantly better than SMEs and owner-managed large enterprises. Thus, it is rather the combination of firm size and owner-management that leads to more crisis resistance.

Intersections of gender, ethnicity, place and innovation: Mapping the diversity of women-led SMEs in the United Kingdom

This article advances knowledge on the diversity and heterogeneity of women-led small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the United Kingdom by analysing how gender intersects with ethnicity and place to influence their engagement in innovation. We adopt an intersectional perspective, and base our analyses on the Longitudinal Small Business Survey (LSBS) data of 29,257 SMEs over the period 2015–2018. Our findings suggest that despite their limited number, as well as firm size and industry sector constraints, women-led SMEs are actively engaged in innovation activities. In addition, our results on the effects of intersecting categories of gender, ethnicity and place on innovation, further emphasise the heterogeneity of women-led SMEs, both with regard to their likelihood to engage in innovation, as well as the place where innovation is most likely to occur. Implications for policy and practice are highlighted.

Forecasting GDP Growth Considering Crisis Shocks Based on Business Survey Results

The article analyzes the short-term effects of aggregate economic sentiment on the expected GDP growth in Russia based on the results of regular large-scale surveys of business activity of the Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) for the period 1998–2021. The main purpose of the study is to substantiate the predictive value of the opinions of economic agents in expanding macroeconomic information, especially during crisis periods. The authors aggregate quarterly information for the analyzed period on 18 indicators of surveys with a sample of about 24,000 organizations in basic kinds of economic activity and 5,000 consumers in all Russian regions in a composite economic sentiment indicator (ESI). Then, a statistical analysis of the time series of ESI and GDP growth is carried out, including the identifcation of the integrability order with testing for stationarity and the presence of causality between indicators. The authors prove the possibility of using a vector autoregression (VAR) model with dummy variables to measure the investigated relationship.The forecasting results reflect the interconnection of two time series with the response in the dynamics of the estimated variable (GDP growth) to the reaction of the business environment and the simulation of fluctuations in the ESI dynamics, which are set by the authors and correspond to the expected economic sentiments amid possible crisis changes. Probabilistic estimates of GDP growth until mid-2022 are based on scenario impulses in the ESI dynamics at the 3rd quarter of 2021, which differ in the amplitude and duration of their impact on economic growth, primarily due to coronavirus shocks. According to the results, under all scenarios for the development of business trends introduced by the authors, national economic growth can exceed by the middle of 2022 the pre-pandemic level of the 4th quarter of 2019 (102,9%).

Changes and proposals to boost business productivity and competitiveness in Riga planning region

The result of the wider application of new digital skills is an increase in productivity as a basis for the growth of Latvian companies in the global market and an increase in material well-being in the market as a whole. In turn, the growth and competitiveness of companies is based on the ability to create and sell demanded, knowledge-intensive products and services on the basis of science, integrating into increasingly higher value-added global chains. Many companies are facing economic difficulties during the COVID- 19 crisis and have to suspend or significantly reduce their operations and staff. However, for some companies, the crisis has also given them the opportunity to reorient their operations to the digital environment, both in serving customers and in organizing the company's operations. The data obtained during the study show that the majority of entrepreneurs predict a decline in customer solvency and the emergence of new digital technologies in the market. Entrepreneurs think they should make more use of the latest technologies (forms of digital sales and communication with customers), new forms of cooperation in company communication (forms of digital communication with employees) and plan to introduce remote and / or semi-remote work. Entrepreneurs expect that the biggest challenges after the crisis caused by the pandemic will be the acquisition of new leadership skills and the acquisition of new digital technologies, as well as attracting investment. Unfortunately, the data of the study show that the majority of entrepreneurs did not use the support programs of state and local government institutions, but assessed the support measures developed by the government as very fragmented. The aim of the research: to assess the changes in the planning region at companies in different sectors in Riga planning region and to develop proposals to increase business productivity and competitiveness. Research methods: statistical data collection, business survey and in-depth interview.

A direct measure of subjective business uncertainty

We present an uncertainty measure that is based on a business survey in which uncertainty is captured directly by a qualitative question on subjective uncertainty regarding expectations. Uncertainty perceptions display persistence at the firm level and changes are associated with past business assessments and expectations. While our uncertainty measure correlates with commonly used alternatives, it is superior in forecasting and suggests a larger role of uncertainty shocks for aggregate fluctuations. Its informational content is highest when considering smaller firms or firms with a low growth rate. Our results confirm the feasibility of constructing uncertainty measures from business survey questions that elicit information on uncertainty of respondents directly.

The Profile of the Companies Most Affected by the COVID-19 Crisis in Morocco

In this article, our target is to handle macroeconomic data of quarterly growth by branch of activity with microeconomic data from the World Bank Business Survey to deduce the profile of the businesses largely affected by the outbreak of COVID-19 crisis in Morocco. Our findings show that the companies and businesses that suffered the most are those which employ more people, and those, which generate less turnover.

Measuring the Impact of COVID-19 on Businesses and People: Lessons from the Census Bureau’s Experience

We provide an overview of Census Bureau activities to enhance the consistency, timeliness, and relevance of our data products in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We highlight new data products designed to provide timely and granular information on the pandemic's impact: the Small Business Pulse Survey, weekly Business Formation Statistics, the Household Pulse Survey, and Community Resilience Estimates. We describe pandemic-related content introduced to existing surveys such as the Annual Business Survey and the Current Population Survey. We discuss adaptations to ensure the continuity and consistency of existing data products such as principal economic indicators and the American Community Survey.