Economic and financial impacts of the pandemic on business in Brazil

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the economic and financial impacts of the pandemic on the number of opening and closing businesses in Brazil. For the development of this study, the data was collected from the Ministry of Economy on the history of companies that opened and closed from 2010 to 2020; monthly sales for 2019 and 2020 with NF-e published by the Internal Revenue Service; IBGE fortnightly survey on the effects of the pandemic on sales in June to August 2020. In addition, an analysis of the relationship between the monthly flow of companies closed in 2020 and the monthly inflation index was carried out. The results point to an increase in the opening of companies “out of necessity” in periods of economic crisis; decrease in NF-e sales in the third quarter, followed by growth from the second half of the year; the greater negative impact of the pandemic on companies with few employees and linked to Construction and Commerce. The analysis of the relationship between the monthly flow of the companies closed in 2020 and the monthly inflation rate was low (r = 0,4231).