Firms in the great global recession: The role of foreign ownership and financial dependence

This paper investigates the channels through which the global crisis of 2008-2009 spread to economic activity of an emerging, fast growing economy with sound macroeconomic fundamentals. On the basis of Polish firm-level data we find that a number of individual firm characteristics account for a heterogeneous response. In particular, foreign ownership appears to have provided a higher degree of resilience to the crisis. Our results indicate that this effect might be due to intra-group lending mechanisms supporting affiliates facing external credit constraints. (C) 2010 Elsevier By. All rights reserved.