Economic crisis and firm exit: do intangibles matter?

Abstract

The crisis regarding the Euro area has caused several business closures, especially in the periphery of the EMU. In this paper we use an orginal Italian firm-level dataset to determine why firms exit the market during times of economic crisis, paying particular attention to the role of intangibles. We argue that intangibles strenghten a firm's resilience, which improves the firm's ability to cope with adverse events and unexpected shocks. We obtain two main results: first, we show that the presence of intangibles significantly reduces the probability of firm exit, especially during the initial phase of the crisis, second, we find that financial constraints become more relevant than intangibles in explaining firm exit during the latest stages of the crisis. Thus, the process of firm selection during the crisis has undergone a rapid transformation, with distorsions that may lead even skilled firms to exit. Implications of these findings for EU recovery policies are discussed.