In a globalized world with high international factor mobility, crises often spread quickly over large parts of the world. Politicians carry a vital interest in keeping crises as small and short as possible. Against this background we study whether the type of company of owner-managed SMEs, in Germany well-known as Mittelstand firms, helps increasing an economy’s crisis resistance. We study this issue at the example of the Great Recession of the years 2008/2009. Using micro panel data from the ifo Business Survey, we study the comparative performance of Mittelstand enterprises and find supporting evidence for the hypothesis that Mittelstand firms performed more stable throughout the Great Recession than non-Mittelstand firms. We also show that owner-managed SMEs performed significantly better than SMEs and owner-managed large enterprises. Thus, it is rather the combination of firm size and owner-management that leads to more crisis resistance.

在一个具有高度国际要素流动性的全球化世界中，危机通常会迅速蔓延到世界大部分地区。政治家们对保持危机尽可能小和尽可能短具有重要利益。在此背景下，我们研究所有者管理的中小企业的公司类型，在德国被称为 Mittelstand 公司，是否有助于提高经济的危机抵抗力。我们以 2008/2009 年的大衰退为例研究这个问题。我们使用来自 ifo 商业调查的微面板数据研究了中小型企业的比较表现，并找到了支持中型企业在整个大衰退期间的表现比非中型企业更稳定的假设的支持证据。我们还表明，业主管理的中小企业的表现明显优于中小企业和业主管理的大型企业。因此，