Business recovery in the European Union after the global financial crisis: lessons for the Coronavirus pandemic

Abstract

The present paper undertakes an analysis of the manufacturing sector performance in the European Union after the 2007-2009 Global financial crisis, with the aim of discovering the lessons to be learned for the post-pandemic world. We employ aggregate data at industry level and use a methodology based on mean difference tests and two-samples Kolmogorov-Smirnoff tests. We find a varied panorama of industry recovery in EU after the 2007-2009 crisis, albeit with different paces depending on size, ownership, and level of technological intensity. There is evidence of a higher flexibility of smaller companies, reflected mostly in productivity gains, and a focus of larger businesses on profitability, supported by their size. Moreover, better personnel cost management has led to a drop in the importance of personnel costs in turnover. Our results are valuable for businesses that needed to survive during the pandemics, as they show that higher business flexibility might support a quicker recovery.