The internal consistency of this scale is good, with a Cronbach alpha of 0.77. Measured in all four rounds of the short-run follow-up surveys.

- <u>Business practices: This measure is only available for firms answering the in-person survey or</u> that have closed down. This is the proportion of the following 9 business practices used in the firm in the last six months (coded as 0 for firms that are not operating).

- Visited a competitor to learn their products or prices

- Asks customers whether there are products or services that they wish the firm would offer

- Offered promotions to attract customers

- Compared suppliers’ prices or product quality with alternatives

- Analyzed company’s performance in order to identify ways to improve

- Changed the ways products and services are presented to make them more attractive

- Consulted the internet, newspapers or books to learn about new developments in their industry

- Has a written budget

- Has set sales goals for the company

These questions were not collected in the first follow-up survey, so average over rounds 2, 3 and 4 of the short-term follow-up.

- “A” Index: The average of standardized z-scores of the business practice, personal initiative, and entrepreneurial self-efficacy indices. We just use the 2016 (fourth survey round) for the shortterm follow-up given that self-efficacy was not collected in earlier rounds.

Additional mechanisms and outcomes in Table A8 are as follows:

- <u>Business survival: a binary variable taking the value one if the entrepreneur is still operating a firm</u> in 2021 and zero otherwise.

- <u>Total firm employees: the number of employees aggregated across all firms run by the entrepreneur,</u> coded as 0 for those not running firms, and winsorized at the 99<sup>th</sup> percentile. Only collected during the in-person survey.

- <u>Total paid workers: the number of paid employees aggregated across all firms run by the</u> entrepreneur, coded as 0 for those not running firms, and winsorized at the 99<sup>th</sup> percentile. Only collected during the in-person survey.

- <u>Innovation index: This is the proportion of the following five innovative activities that the</u> entrepreneur has taken (coded as 0 for firms that are closed), asked only in the in-person survey: `o` Changed the main location or industry in which the business operates in the past five years

- Pivoted by changing the focus of their business to a different product, different type of customer, or different target market since March 2020

- Introduced a new product or service since March 2020

- Introduced a new product or service that was invented by the company based on their own ideas (as opposed to being purchased from a supplier or copied from others) since March 2020

- Introduced a new product or service that was invented by the company based on their own ideas or copied from others since March 2020.

- <u>Digitalization index: The proportion of the following four uses of digital technology in their</u> business (coded as 0 for firms that are closed), asked only in the in-person survey:

- Has started using, or increased the use of internet, online social media, specialized apps, or digital platforms since March 2020

26