What Can Big Business Do to Help Smaller Firms?

Small and medium-sized businesses are critical players in corporate supply chains. Sometimes their participation is opaque in that they exist as undisclosed sub-contractors.

The policy response to the current crisis has been to treat it as a liquidity crisis. Specifically, the shock of the Covid lockdown and its disruption to business was seen as a temporary first-order effect. Government programs such as the Paycheck Protection Program provided loans to small businesses to ensure that they could keep making payroll and stay intact through the lockdown.