The impact of Covid-19 on bankruptcies and market exits of Italian firms

The article entitled 'The impact of Covid-19 on bankruptcies and market exits of Italian firms', written by researchers from the Bank of Italy, is now online.

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a large impact on the Italian economy, with GDP falling by 8.9 percent in 2020. However, fewer bankruptcy liquidations and, more generally, exits from the market occurred in 2020 than in 2019, and their numbers remained below pre-pandemic levels even in 2021. On top of the suspension of bankruptcy filings during the early pandemic period, such reduction is a consequence of the wide array of economic support measures implemented by the government. Indeed, the take-up of several such measures has been larger in sectors that were hit particularly hard by the Covid shock. Consistently, variations in the frequency of bankruptcies and exits are largely uncorrelated with the intensity of the economic impact of the pandemic at the sector level.