Analysis of the survival of individual micro entrepreneurs, micro and small brazilian companies during covid-19 pandemic
A significant pillar of the Brazilian economy is the performance of Microentrepreneurs and Micro and Small Businesses, which together represent 90% of Brazilian companies. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the population's fall in purchasing power, these companies have suffered a significant impact. This study examines the survival factors of Brazilian Micro and Small Businesses from March to November 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Given this global reality, it is of fundamental importance to analyze the survival factors of these companies and which of them had the greatest weight in the discrimination of monthly revenue greater than or equal to zero. The general objective of this research is to identify and analyze the main variables that discriminate the variation in revenue of small businesses (Micro and Small Companies - MPEs and Individual Microentrepreneurs - MEIs) during the COVID-19 pandemic, using data collected and provided by Sebrae and develop a linear regression model capable of evaluating the statistical importance of these variables. The research focuses on analyzing the impact of the pandemic on 66,005 Brazilian companies through the database of the Brazilian Support Service for Micro and Small Businesses (SEBRAE). The analysis is of the inferential statistical type through the linear regression model, which allowed the development of a ranking of numerical and categorical variables analyzed, with the degree of statistical importance for the variation in revenue. In a complementary way, the profile of companies that had a greater propensity to survive the crisis was determined, that is, that showed a positive variation in revenue. The research developed allowed us to identify that one of the research variables “did not change the company's functioning during the crisis” presented the highest positive contribution to a variation in revenue (greater than or equal to zero), with an average coefficient of linear regressions of 9.3, while the variable “adopted measures with employees” is the one that contributed most negatively to the variation in companies' revenue during the COVID-19 pandemic, with an average coefficient of -3.9. From analyzing the profile of the companies, it was possible to identify, among several factors, that the enterprises with the highest positive revenue rate operated normally during the pandemic.