The Fall and Rise of Small Businesses: Race, Government Aid, and Growth After the Pandemic

What happened to small businesses, government aid, and racial inequality during the pandemic and subsequent economic recovery. The Fall and Rise of Small Businesses provides the first comprehensive analysis of the plight of small businesses, social distancing restrictions, racial inequality, government aid, and broader measures of the US economy during the pandemic and economic recovery.Robert Fairlie weaves evidence from the most up-to-date data on business activity, as well as novel data on PPP receipt and business outcomes recently released by the US Census Bureau, to tell a compelling story of what happened over one of the most important and disruptive five-year periods of economic history-from the first cases of COVID in the United States to five years later in the recovery. Although small businesses were severely affected by mandated social distancing restrictions to slow the spread of COVID-19, business activity has more than recovered five years later.The economic recovery has