Cowling Marc, Brown Ross, Rocha Augusto
University of Derby, UK.
University of St Andrews, UK.
Int Small Bus J. 2020 Nov;38(7):593-604. doi: 10.1177/0266242620945102.
As COVID-19 spreads across the globe, a common public policy response has been to enforce the temporary closure of non-essential business activity. In some countries, governments have underwritten a proportion of the wage income for staff forced to furlough or broadened their welfare systems to accommodate newly laid off workers or small business owners. While these actions are helpful, they do not explicitly address the lack of sales trading activity on business income and cash balances. In commentary, we identify what types of businesses have been increasing their cash holdings in the lead up to COVID-19 as an indication of what types of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are most at risk if the lockdown extends for a protracted period of time. We find that only 39% of the of businesses were bolstering their cash balances leading up to COVID-19 which suggests that 61% of businesses may run out of cash, including 8.6% that had no retained earnings whatsoever with micro firms at particular risk. The importance of precautionary saving for SMEs is critical to enhance resilience when Black Swan events occur.
随着新冠疫情在全球蔓延，常见的公共政策应对措施是强制暂时关闭非必要商业活动。在一些国家，政府已为被迫休假的员工承担了一部分工资收入，或扩大了福利体系，以接纳新失业的工人或小企业主。虽然这些举措有所帮助，但它们并未明确解决商业收入和现金余额方面缺乏销售交易活动的问题。在评论中，我们确定了在新冠疫情爆发前哪些类型的企业一直在增加现金持有量，以此作为一种迹象，表明如果封锁持续很长时间，哪些类型的中小企业（SMEs）面临的风险最大。我们发现，在新冠疫情爆发前，只有39%的企业在增加现金余额，这表明61%的企业可能会现金耗尽，其中包括8.6%完全没有留存收益的企业，微型企业尤其面临风险。预防性储蓄对中小企业至关重要，有助于在黑天鹅事件发生时增强韧性。
