Lorry drivers on tight schedules. Pet owners demanding more from their vets. Sales and service staff working from home with little access to office support. Archaeologists staying in hotels as a way of life. Hospitality staff working longer than contracted hours to make ends meet. Short-term contracts restricting access to finance. Ex-Army personnel with PTSD… Read more

Bouncing back from the Covid-19 crisis: reflections on mental health and resilience
May 26, 2020

Bouncing back from the Covid-19 crisis: reflections on mental health and resilience. Firms that survive adversity often have the abilities, characteristics and actions of their employees to thank. As many reflected during Mental Health Awareness Week last week, it is worth remembering that the current crisis will undoubtedly have impacted upon the mental health of… Read more

R&D: What can the Great Recession tell us about the likely impact of COVID-19?
May 7, 2020

It seems increasingly clear that the economic impacts of COVID-19 will be startlingly sharp for the UK and other world economies. The great unknown at present is whether the historic quarterly contraction we’re expecting to see in Q2 of 2020 is followed by a rebound, or a deep and painful recession. What’s also difficult to… Read more

Is small lending too big to fail? Covid-19 and P2P lending to SMEs
May 6, 2020

Over the last decade, the landscape of SME finance has changed dramatically. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, while traditional bank lending experienced a sluggish recovery, a new model of online marketplace (P2P) business lending emerged. Funding Circle, started in 2010, was the world’s first P2P platform to fund business loans and seemed to… Read more

In this Insight paper we review international evidence drawn from OECD databases which provide comparable time-series on sectoral R&D trends for the period 2008-2016. Our central focus is how R&D trends in UK sectors in the UK differed from those in other countries in the aftermath of the great financial crisis.
Total business R&D spending in the UK fell marginally from 2008-10 before recovering consistently to reach a level 23 per cent higher than that in the recession by 2016. R&D spending in services recovered significantly more quickly than that in manufacturing sectors, some of which have never regained the volume of R&D investment which they had in the recession.
In manufacturing, the poorer performing sectors have tended to be more traditional foundation industries. In services, poor performing sectors have tended to be those which grew rapidly in the pre-recession period – information and communication and financial services.
Roper, Stephen
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R&D and innovation after Covid-19: What can we expect?
A review of trends after the financial crisis
ERC Insight

Data from successive UK Innovation Surveys suggests that the proportion of innovation active firms fell 58 per cent during the last recession (2008-10) with parallel falls in product/service innovation (26.6 per cent), process innovation (22.6 per cent). The percentage of firms engaging in less financially demanding wider innovation – e.g. in marketing or strategy – increased by 14 per cent to the recession period.
Recovery speeds varied. The pre-recession proportion of innovation active firms was never fully regained and the proportion of firms doing product/service innovation and process innovation took more than six years to recover pre-recession levels. The percentage of firms doing wider innovation grew throughout the post-recession period.
Roper, Stephen
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Employee well-being, mental health and productivity in Midlands firms: The employer perspective

Research Report

This report focuses on the engagement, attitudes and behaviours of around 1,900 employers across the East and West Midlands to employee well-being and mental health. It also considers the effects of well-being and mental health on organisational performance and productivity. Data for the study was collected through telephone interviews and in-depth case studies in the three months immediately before the Covid-19 virus lockdown. The report therefore provides a pre-Covid-19 baseline which may be a useful comparator in months and years to come, when considering the impacts of the pandemic on employers and employees

Since the first death in China in early January 2020, the coronavirus (COVID-19) has spread across the globe, dominated the news headlines and led to fundamental changes in the health, social, political and economic landscape. In this paper, we examine consumer spending responses to the onset and spread of COVID-19, and subsequent government imposed lockdown in Great Britain, GB (England, Scotland, Wales).
Chronopoulos, Dimitris K.
Lukas, Marcel
Wilson, John

Mark Hart authored a blog for The Aston Angle looking at how businesses will be impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.  Some sectors may benefit financially, while others will suffer huge losses. Those countries with more service-oriented economies, like the UK, will be more negatively affected and will suffer larger negative employment effects. The UK economy was not in great shape coming into the COVID-19 crisis, after experiencing years’ of little growth and investment, due to the uncertainty of Brexit.  
Read the full blog here