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This paper details the results from the first comprehensive survey of private firms across major urban areas in the Syrian Arab Republic-including Aleppo, Homs, Hama, Latakia, and Damascus-since the conflict began in 2011. This builds on the World Bank's Enterprise Survey from 2009 and attempts to survey each of the 508 firms from 2009 again. The survey highlights the major challenges facing firms in Syria today, such as access to electricity, fuel, and water. Yet, loss of workers, managers, and supply chain relationships are also notably severe. Rebuilding the social and human capital of Syria may be even more difficult than the bricks and mortar. The paper also identifies the ways firms have been affected in their prices, sales, supply chains, taxation, and costs as well as how they have adapted in financing and employment. These constraints and impacts are also analyzed at the subnational level and across sectors. Firms in Aleppo stand out for their uniquely difficult challenges and responses that are sometimes at odds with the rest of the country. Finally, the paper analyzes firm exit from 2009 to 2017 and finds that higher productivity firms from 2009 were more likely to survive, except in Aleppo where the reverse holds. The paper hypothesizes that productive firms facing the particularly severe destruction in Aleppo may have made a different calculation compared with productive firms elsewhere: to use their capabilities to leave rather than to use their capabilities to weather the storm.

Access To Finance --- Access To Services --- Business Environment --- Conflict --- Conflict and Development --- Enterprise Survey --- Firm Death --- Migration --- Private Sector Development --- Survival --- Urban Development

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This study highlights how COVID-19 has affected small and medium enterprises, drawing on newly released World Bank Enterprise Surveys in 13 countries. The study shows that firms of all sizes are severely affected in multiple dimensions; however, firm size matters for the intensity of the different channels of transmission and firms' responses. Small and medium enterprise sales shrink by more and their cash drains faster than large firms in the same sector and country. Among them, faster growing firms experience the demand shock somewhat less severely, but they are more exposed to international trade disruption, supply, and finance shocks. Yet, a range of firm responses to the downturn seem to be out of reach. Fewer small and medium-size enterprises, for example, start remote work, leaving their workers exposed to health risks. To make it through the pandemic, the majority of smaller firms do not turn to banks for loans; they need grants. Although development finance is not enough to fill the financing gap, development finance institutions are relevant - in investment mobilization, demonstration, and know-how - as economies move toward recovery and rebuilding. Delivering these requires rapid efforts to build partnerships and gather information in places where development finance has been limited in the past.

Business Environment --- Coronavirus --- COVID-19 --- Development Finance --- Enterprise Survey --- Pandemic Impact --- Pandemic Response --- Private Sector Economics --- Recovery --- Small and Medium Size Enterprise

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Drawing on a representative survey of firms in 38 countries, eight of which are in Sub-Saharan Africa, this paper documents the impact of COVID-19 and firms' coping strategies in Sub-Saharan Africa, benchmarking with other regions. The paper shows that the impact of the pandemic is more pronounced in Sub-Saharan Africa compared with other regions. This disproportionate impact is not explained by differences in sectoral composition and other firm characteristics, but likely by the level of development. This underscores the important economic and structural contexts that predate the pandemic in understanding the differential impact. Contrary to expectations, the findings show that businesses in Sub-Saharan Africa are more likely to adjust their operations or products and services to adapt to the shock than those in other regions. However, firms in the region lag in leveraging digital technologies, remote working, and e-commerce, compared with those in other regions.

Business Cycles and Stabilization Policies --- Coping Strategy --- Coronavirus --- COVID-19 --- Disease Control and Prevention --- Employment and Unemployment --- Enterprise Survey --- Firms --- Labor Markets --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Pandemic Impact --- Pandemic Response --- Private Sector Development --- Private Sector Economics --- Social Protections and Labor

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Does a global value chain framework provide additional insights into the question of whether foreign direct investment is beneficial to host countries? The literature has found mixed results on whether foreign direct investment provides positive spillovers over and above mere financing. But the studies have focused on one country, or studies with an international focus tend to abstract from intersectoral linkages. By examining this question in the context of global value chains, this paper provides a much better understanding of the association as well as general validity. It harmonizes three major panel data sets: 1) the Multi-Regional Input-Output table for international input-output linkages, 2) the FDI Markets reports for greenfield foreign direct investment, and 3) the World Bank Enterprise Surveys for firm performance measures. The paper produces a rich panel data set from 2011 to 2017. The findings show that foreign direct investment has a positive effect on labor productivity in sectors and firms within those sectors. Moreover, global value chain participation plays a key role in shaping the foreign direct investment effects. Sectors with lower global value chain participation benefit more from foreign direct investment: doubling the foreign direct investment in those sectors results in an 8 percent productivity gain. The positive effect seems to be due to the increased competition created by foreign direct investment. Foreign direct investment spillovers also take place through domestic and foreign backward linkages, which means that foreign direct investment also has positive inter-sector and cross-border spillovers.

Enterprise Survey --- FDI --- Firm Performance --- Foreign Direct Investment --- Global Value Chain --- Global Value Chains and Business Clustering --- Globalization and Financial Integration --- Input-Output Linkages --- International Economics and Trade --- Labor Productivity --- Private Sector Development --- Spillovers

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The authors investigate the relationship between the productivity of African manufacturing firms and their access to services inputs. They use data from the World Bank Enterprise Survey for over 1,000 firms in 10 Sub-Saharan African countries to calculate the total factor productivity of firms. The Enterprise Surveys also contain unique measures of firms' access to communications, electricity, and financial services. The availability of these measures at the firm level, both as subjective and objective indicators, allows the authors to exploit the variation in services performance at the subnational regional level. Furthermore, by using the regional variation in services performance, they are also able to address concerns about the possible endogeneity of the services variables. The results show a significant and positive relationship between firm productivity and service performance in all three services sectors analyzed. The authors thus provide support for the argument that improvements in services industries contribute to enhancing the performance of downstream economic activities, and thus are an essential element of a strategy for promoting growth and reducing poverty.

Access To Services --- Communications --- Data --- E-Business --- Economic Activities --- Economic Theory and Research --- Electricity --- Electronic Delivery --- Enterprise Survey --- Enterprise Surveys --- Export Markets --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Financial Literacy --- Financial Services --- Information --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Manufacturing --- Microfinance --- Performance --- Prices --- Private Sector Development --- Production Process --- Productivity --- Result --- Results --- Telecommunication --- Telecommunications