Advanced digitalisation and resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic: firm-level evidence from developing and emerging economies

Advanced digital production technologies - often clustered under the label of 'Industry 4.0'- are reshaping industrial production. Using novel firm-level data collected by UNIDO this paper investigates the extent to which these technologies shielded developing countries' manufacturing firms in times of COVID-19. The results of the analysis show that the adoption of the latest vintage of digital technologies strengthened firms' robustness against the shock and, at the same time, facilitated their readiness to respond and adapt to the new context. These findings pose relevant implications for the design of post-COVID recovery strategies to strengthen future industrial resilience in developing and emerging economies.