Comments by Juthathip Jongwanich, on Unintended Consequences of Business Digitalization Among MSMEs During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Case of Indonesia

Juthathip Jongwanich: This paper examines impacts of digital platforms and global supply chain (GSC) participation on micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises’ (MSMEs’) performance, including sales and employment in Indonesia during COVID-19 in 2020–21. Indonesia’ s business survey is used with the difference-in-difference method to reach the objective of the paper. There are two periods of experiment. In the first period, samples cover the time where large-scale social restrictions, a bottom–up social-restriction approach, were imposed, that is, from 10 April 2020 to the beginning of 2021. Correspondingly, from the survey, firms’ performance was compared between February to March 2020 and March to April 2020. The second period was from January 2021 to April 2021, where a top–down social-restriction approach was implemented. Information of the survey during February to March 2021 was utilized to reflect the short-run analysis whereas that from April to March 2021 was used to reflect the long-run responses...