This study investigated the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on firm risk and performance in different country-level governance qualities in the MENA region. Analyzing a sample of 739 non-financial listed firms in 12 MENA countries for the period 2011-2020, we found that the COVID-19 crisis negatively impacted the performance of firms, especially low-performance firms, in most industries, and increased firm risk in general. Moreover, we found that national governance quality plays an important role in mitigating the negative impact of the COVID-19 crisis on firm operations. Specifically, national governance quality reduces the negative impact of the COVID-19 crisis on firm performance and the positive impact of the crisis on firm risk. The results are consistent with our contention that national governance quality contributes to creating a positive environment for businesses activities and reducing economic shocks.
Copyright: © 2023 Almustafa et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.