Innovation as a resilience strategy to economic crises for international food and drink firms

The 2008–2009 global economic downturn emphasized the role of demand contractions and the potential mediation role of trade on firms' performance in times of crisis. Evidence in anticyclical sectors such as the food industry is scarce. Using European firm-level data on the 2008–2009 crisis, we explore (i) whether the internal demand or market synchronism (external demand) prevailed when assessing their relation with the crisis and (ii) the role innovation strategies played in mitigating this in weathering the drop in demand. Results indicate that the more internationalized firms are, the more they suffer from economic crises, with exporters the most affected, but that innovation can have a mitigating role.