How lockdown causes a missing generation of start-ups and jobs


Karimov S. Konings J.
July 2021Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH

International Economics and Economic Policy
2021#18Issue 3457 - 473 pp.

This paper explores the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on aggregate employment in Belgium. To this end, we use microdata of all Belgian firms and apply a machine learning-based approach to simulate the impact of the lockdown on employment growth under various economic scenarios. In doing so, we distinguish between start-ups and incumbent firms with both short and long-term effects. In the short term, we expect to see significant losses of employment coming mainly from mature incumbent firms. In the long term, the missing generation of start-ups formed during the lockdown will have a significant and growing effect of slowing down the employment growth even a decade after the lockdown.

COVID-19 , Employment dynamics , Machine learning , Start-ups

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Department of Economics, VIVES, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
Graduate School of Business, Nazarbayev University, Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan
University of Liverpool Management School, Liverpool, United Kingdom

Department of Economics
Graduate School of Business
University of Liverpool Management School

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