Women-led firms’ performance during the Covid-19 pandemic. Evidence from an emerging economy

Grijalva, Diego (2023): Women-led firms’ performance during the Covid-19 pandemic. Evidence from an emerging economy.

Abstract

In this paper we analyze the on-impact effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on Ecuadorian firms and, conditional on this, we analyze firms' short-run performance. We estimate various econometric models on a combined dataset of almost 5,000 firms that includes fiscal-year performance variables from the Ecuadorian Superintendencia de Compañías and results from a survey conducted by a major financial institution in Ecuador at the beginning of the pandemic. Our main result is that micro women-led firms and women-led firms outside of the main Ecuadorian cities were more affected at the onset of the pandemic. Despite this impact, their performance by the end of 2020 was not worse compared to less affected firms. We also find that smaller firms as well as firms in the hospitality sector were both more affected and performed worse than other firms. Finally, younger firms were less affected and performed better than older firms, but at the cost of increased debt and less cash.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Firms' performance, Covid-19, emerging economies
• Subjects: D - Microeconomics > D2 - Production and Organizations > D22 - Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis; G - Financial Economics > G3 - Corporate Finance and Governance > G32 - Financing Policy ; Financial Risk and Risk Management ; Capital and Ownership Structure ; Value of Firms ; Goodwill; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J1 - Demographic Economics > J16 - Economics of Gender ; Non-labor Discrimination; L - Industrial Organization > L2 - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior > L25 - Firm Performance: Size, Diversification, and Scope; L - Industrial Organization > L2 - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior > L26 - Entrepreneurship; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O5 - Economywide Country Studies > O54 - Latin America ; Caribbean

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