02582cas a2200337 a 4500 AALejournalIMF022443 230101c9999 xx r poo 0 0eng d 5.00 USD 9798400201073 1018-5941 BD-DhAAL BD-DhAAL Abidi, Nordine. Digitalization and Resilience : Firm-level Evidence During the COVID-19 Pandemic / Nordine Abidi, Mehdi El Herradi, Sahra Sakha. Washington, D.C. : International Monetary Fund, 2022. 1 online resource (43 pages) IMF Working Papers <strong>Off-Campus Access:</strong> No User ID or Password Required <strong>On-Campus Access:</strong> No User ID or Password Required Electronic access restricted to authorized BRAC University faculty, staff and students The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an unprecedented shock to firms with adverse consequences for existing productive capacities. At the same time, digitalization has increasingly been touted as a key pathway for mitigating economic losses from the pandemic, and we expect firms facing digital constraints to be less resilient to supply shocks. This paper uses firm-level data to investigate whether digitally-enabled firms have been able to mitigate economic losses arising from the pandemic better than digitally-constrained firms in the Middle East and Central Asia region using a difference-in-differences approach. Controlling for demand conditions, we find that digitally-enabled firms faced a lower decline in sales by about 4 percentage points during the pandemic compared to digitally-constrained firms, suggesting that digitalization acted as a hedge during the pandemic. Against this backdrop, our results suggest that policymakers need to close the digital gap and accelerate firms' digital transformation. This will be essential for economies to bounce back from the pandemic, and build the foundations for future resilience. Mode of access: Internet COVID-19, Digitalization and Technology Adoption imf Diffusion Processes imf Economic Resilience, Middle East and Central Asia imf Firm Behavior imf Health imf Technological Change imf El Herradi, Mehdi. Sakha, Sahra. IMF Working Papers; Working Paper ; No. 2022/034 Full text available on IMF http://elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/001/2022/034/001.2022.issue-034-en.xml IMF e-Library