Direkt zum Inhalt

7. Mai 2021

Brown Bag Seminar Industrial Economics

Emergency Aid for the Self-Employed in the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Flash in the Pan?

Termin

7. Mai 2021
10:30 - 11:30

Ort

Online seminar via Cisco Webex

Sprecher*innen

Caroline Stiel, DIW Berlin

The self-employed are among those facing the highest probability of strong income losses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Governments in many countries introduced support programs to support the self-employed, including the German federal government, which approved a €50bn emergency aid program at the end of March 2020 offering one-off lump-sum payments of up to €15,000 to those facing substantial revenue declines. In this contribution, we investigate the impact of this program using a real-time online-survey data with a total of more than 20,000 observations. We employ propensity score matching, making use of a rich set of variables that influence selection into the treatment and the outcome variable, the subjective survival probability. We observe that the emergency aid program had significant effects, with the subjective survival probability of self-employed persons being moderately increased. We further reveal important effect heterogeneities with respect to education, industries, and the timing of the payment. Notably, positive effects only occur among those whose application was processed within a few days and the magnitude of the effect decreases the more time has passed since the emergency aid was granted. Our findings have important policy implications for the design of such support programs in the course of this crisis.

Joint work with Jörn Block, Alexander S. Kritikos, and Maximilian Priem.

  

This is an online seminar using Cisco Webex. You will receive the login data with the invitation to the talk.

Speaker

Caroline Stiel, DIW Berlin

Kontakt

keyboard_arrow_up