When societies face catastrophe—war, pandemic, or natural disaster—governments act to protect lives. But rarely do they confront an equally urgent question: how to fairly distribute the economic burden of shutting things down.

Consider the ongoing war in Ukraine. The conflict has heavily disrupted private business, particularly through reduced entrepreneurship and small firm closures. A survey by the Bank of Ukraine in early 2022 found that 75 percent of small businesses halted their work during the invasion. According to a study by David Audretsch, Hossein Momtaz, Pavlo Motuzenko and Silvio Vismara, Ukraine’s number of self-employed workers fell by about 675,000 after the 2014 Crimea invasion—a decline of roughly 20 percent compared with what might otherwise have been expected. Small and

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