The economic crisis triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic prompted governments to issue several relief mechanisms to hold up companies and workers. This study analyzes how accounting information and regulation can support policymakers in the wake of a systemic crisis. Based on an accounting-based framework and readily available data from financial statements, it forecasts the impact of the crisis in terms of losses, equity depletion, and corporate defaults, absent government intervention. Next, it quantifies the costs and effects of five relief mechanisms in alleviating the risk of generalized corporate bankruptcies. The effects of the health pandemic and relief mechanisms on profitability and equity shortfalls are estimated for a sample of 586,076 privately held Italian firms. The findings indicate that the number of companies facing bankruptcy risk would increase from 65,463 (11% of the population) in 2019 to 153,681 (26%) in 2020, absent any government intervention. Altogether, these firms employ 1.4 million employees and have a total exposure to the financial industry equal to €68 billion in loans. Next, we assess the effects of relief mechanisms introduced by the Italian government to support corporations, whose aggregate costs reach €49.33 billion in 2020, and find that the interventions ‘rescue’ about 43,000 firms otherwise in default. Finally, the study adds to the debate on the role of accounting regulation in the wake of a systemic crisis by (a) discussing the effects of temporary changes to accounting rules on the informativeness and transparency of financial statements, and (b) suggesting alternative ways to modify accounting rules to safeguard corporate survival without compromising the informativeness of financial statements once the crisis reaches a halt.

Covid-19 大流行引发的经济危机促使各国政府发布了若干救济机制来阻止公司和工人。本研究分析了会计信息和监管如何在系统性危机之后为政策制定者提供支持。基于基于会计的框架和财务报表中现成的数据，它在没有政府干预的情况下预测了危机在损失、股权枯竭和公司违约方面的影响。接下来，它量化了五种救济机制在减轻企业普遍破产风险方面的成本和效果。对 586,076 家意大利私营公司的样本估计了健康大流行和救济机制对盈利能力和股权短缺的影响。调查结果表明，在没有任何政府干预的情况下，面临破产风险的公司数量将从 2019 年的 65,463 家（占人口的 11%）增加到 2020 年的 153,681 家（26%）。这些公司总共雇佣了 140 万名员工，在金融行业的总贷款额为 680 亿欧元。接下来，我们评估了意大利政府为支持企业而引入的救济机制的效果，这些企业的总成本在 2020 年达到 493.3 亿欧元，并发现这些干预措施“拯救”了大约 43,000 家违约公司。最后，该研究通过（a）讨论会计规则的临时变更对财务报表的信息量和透明度的影响，增加了关于系统性危机后会计监管作用的辩论，