Emergency-aid for self-employed in the Covid-19 pandemic: A flash in the pan?

ABSTRACT: The self-employed faced strong income losses during the Covid-19 pandemic. Many governments introduced programs to financially support the self-employed during the pandemic, including Germany. The German Ministry for Economic Affairs announced a €50bn emergency-aid program in March 2020, offering one-off lump-sum payments of up to €15,000 to those facing substantial revenue declines. By reassuring the self-employed that the government 'would not let them down' during the crisis, the program had also the important aim of motivating the self-employed to get through the crisis. We investigate whether the program affected the confidence of the self-employed to survive the crisis using real-time online-survey data comprising more than 20,000 observations. We employ propensity score matching, ma

SUBMITTER: Block J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9547119 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature