Firm-level characteristics and the impact of COVID-19: Examining the effects of foreign ownership and international trade

Using a large multi-country firm-level data set from the World Bank Enterprise Survey, we examine whether multinational corporations (MNCs) differ from domestic firms in the prevalence and size of the impact of COVID-19 on sales. Our findings reveal significant differences between MNCs and domestic firms, especially when accounting for the interplay between foreign ownership and international trade. Exporting MNCs are significantly less likely to experience a negative sales impact; this finding is robust to controlling for firm characteristics including size, age and productivity and the use of a propensity score reweighting approach based on the likelihood that a firm was foreign owned prior to the onset of the pandemic. Regarding the impact of the pandemic on the level of sales decrease, trading MNCs experience a significantly smaller negative impact. However, MNCs with joint high levels of imports and exports sustain a larger negative effect. MNCs operating in countries and sectors characterised by a high degree of participation in international production networks are less affected by the pandemic. When controlling for the interaction between MNCs and international trade, we also find a direct positive effect of foreign ownership on the size of sales decrease, representing a liability of foreignness effect.