Norwegian and US Policies Alleviate Business Vulnerability Due to the Covid-19 Shock Equally Well

Annette Alstadsæter, Julie Brun Bjørkheim, Wojciech Kopczuk, Andreas Økland

NBER Working Paper No. 27637
Issued in August 2020
NBER Program(s):Economic Fluctuations and Growth, Public Economics

We use Norwegian administrative data and applications for emergency government support to simulate magnitude and distribution of business revenue shock due to the Covid-19 pandemic. We rely on it to analyze the impact of business support policies available in Norway and the United States by comparing simulated results from the various policies on a common data set. We find that policies supporting payroll and fixed costs that were available in both countries have a similar impact of reducing firms' economic distress, by cutting the negative effect of the crisis on profitability, liquidity, debt, and solvency by over a half.

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Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w27637

Published: Annette Alstadsæter & Julie Brun Bjørkheim & Wojciech Kopczuk & Andreas Økland, 2020. "Norwegian and U.S. Policies Alleviate Business Vulnerability Due to the COVID-19 Shock Equally Well," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 73(3), pages 805-828, September. citation courtesy of