External Demand and Export Performance : Regression Residuals During the Covid-19 Pandemic

We econometrically investigate the heterogeneous ability of Italian exporting sectors at coping with the Covid-19 shock, which affected in an idiosyncratic fashion both supply, mainly due to the selective suspension of non-essential activities in the country during the lockdown in March-April 2020, and foreign demand. Our results show that had the lockdown not impaired production, overall Italian manufacturing exports would have fallen essentially one-to-one with foreign demand. We conclude that there is no evidence, so far, of Covid-19 having permanently weakened the decade-long ability of Italian firms to safeguard their positions in international markets