Publication:
Does the COVID-19 Pandemic Affect Women-Owned Firms Differently?

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2020-07-21
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2020-08-10
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The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic and its negative economic effects create an urgent need for timely data and evidence to help monitor and mitigate the social and economic impacts of the crisis and protect the welfare of the least well-off in Ethiopia's society. To monitor the impacts of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic on Ethiopia's economy and people and inform interventions and policy responses, the World Bank Ethiopia team, in collaboration with the government, designed and implemented two high-frequency phone surveys, one with firms and one with households.
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Abebe, Girum; Bundervoet, Tom; Wieser, Christina. 2020. Does the COVID-19 Pandemic Affect Women-Owned Firms Differently?. Monitoring COVID-19 Impacts on Firms in Ethiopia;No. 4. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34298 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.
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    Monitoring COVID-19 Impacts on Firms in Ethiopia
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-09) Abebe, Girum; Bundervoet, Tom; Wieser, Christina
    As COVID-19 continues to disrupt the Ethiopian economy, a major concern is that the pre-existing gendered challenges facing women entrepreneurs, in access to capital and hired labor, for example, will worsen, further undermining the survival and performance of women-owned firms. However, very little data exist to monitor the gender differences in impacts brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, in April 2020, the World Bank launched a high-frequency phone survey (HFPS-F) of a random sample of firms in Addis Ababa to collect detailed information on firm operations, hiring and firing, and expectations of future operations and labor demand. The analysis that follows draws on the three rounds of the HFPS-F survey implemented between April 15 and June 18, 2020, consisting of a balanced panel of 454 firms from Addis Ababa.
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    How Have Firms Fared in Times of COVID-19 in Addis Ababa?
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-11-24) Wieser, Christina; Abebe, Girum; Asfaw, Adamsu
    The COVID-19 pandemic and its negative economic effects create a need for timely data and evidence to help monitor and mitigate the social and economic impacts of the crisis. To monitor the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and related containment measures on formal firms in Ethiopia and inform the policy response, the World Bank, in collaboration with the government, is implementing a high-frequency phone survey of firms (HFPS-F). The HFPS-F interviews a sample of firms in Addis Ababa every three weeks for a total of eight survey rounds. This high-frequency follow-up allows for a better understanding of the effects of and responses to the COVID-19 pandemic on firm operations, hiring and firing, and expectations of future operations and labor demand in order to better tailor and implement interventions and policy responses and monitor their effects
  • Publication
    Monitoring COVID-19 Impacts on Firms in Ethiopia, Report No. 2
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-05-15) Abebe, Girum; Bundervoet, Tom; Wieser, Christina
    The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic and its negative economic effects create an urgent need for timely data and evidence to help monitor and mitigate the social and economic impacts of the crisis and protect the welfare of the least well-off in Ethiopia's society. To monitor the impacts of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic on Ethiopia's economy and people and inform interventions and policy responses, the World Bank Ethiopia team, in collaboration with the government, designed and implemented two high-frequency phone surveys, one with firms and one with households.
  • Publication
    Monitoring COVID-19 Impacts on Firms in Ethiopia, Report No. 8
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-09-25) Bundervoet, Tom; Abebe, Girum; Wieser, Christina
    This one-pager summarizes the results of the sixth round of the HFPS-F in Addis Ababa, implemented between August 17 and September 8, 2020. The information presented here is based on 331 firms that were still operational at the time of the survey. Firms that had temporarily closed because of the COVID pandemic were not interviewed in R6, which is a difference with the previous survey rounds (when temporarily closed firms were also interviewed). Firm closures will be looked at in detail in a separate brief.
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    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-07) Abebe, Girum; Alibhai, Salman; Buehren, Niklas; Ebrahim, Menaal; Hailemicheal, Adiam
    This brief summarizes findings from a high-frequency survey of women-owned firms in Ethiopia which participate in the International Development Association (IDA) - financed Women Entrepreneurship Development Project (WEDP). Over the past five years, WEDP reached nearly 40,000 women-owned firms in Ethiopia with meso-loans and business training. Many WEDP firms had been on a high-growth trajectory, with firms that benefited from WEDP services growing incomes by 67 percent and employment by 55 percent over a three-year period prior to the crisis. This brief is based on the results from the first round of the survey, implemented between May 15, 2020 and June 15, 2020, revealing some initial insights into the scale of the impacts and the nature of the challenges currently facing the WEDP firms.

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