Questions and answers about
the economy.

Current Research

Map view

Economists from around the world are using real time data collection to better understand the impact the Covid-19 crisis is having on families, workers, firms and society, and how policies can help the recovery out of the crisis. Find out more about how these research teams are carrying out their projects, and what their findings are below.

Attitudes, behaviours and sources of information among social media users towards Covid-19: a cross-cultural explanatory study

Researchers, policymakers and societies alike are increasingly discussing the New Coronavirus situation. The European Commission, national governments and private foundations are investing large amounts of money for research, focusing on finding the ...
Lead investigator: Yash Chawla

The tradeoff between healthcare and income contributions during the Covid-19 pandemic

We investigate the trade-off between public support in the form of charitable contributions to healthcare needs versus income support for displaced workers during the Covid-19 pandemic. We conducted a nationwide incentivized experiment in the United ...
Lead investigator: Samir Huseynov
Countries

How contagious is a pandemic to the housing market? evidence from day-by-day sales and minute-by-minute bids after a Covid-19 policy intervention

We exploit day-by-day transaction and minute-by-minute auction data from Norway in order to estimate the effect on the housing market of the government intervention on 12 March 2020 and further effects from economic relief packages announced on 20 Ma...
Primary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Andre K. Anundsen
Countries

Youth empowerment in Bolivia

We evaluate a program that aims to help vulnerable youth aged 15-18 find a job, improve their working conditions and strengthen their income generation capacity. In order to achieve these goals, the program, which is implemented in four regions of Bo...
Lead investigator: Selim Gulesci
Countries

Labor market policies during a pandemic

Many countries have introduced lockdowns to fight Covid-19, which has required the shuttering of many businesses and dramatically increased unemployment. We study the interaction of lockdowns and employment support programs in an epidemiological SEIR...
Secondary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: Andrew Glover
Countries

Covid-19 and attitudes about markets and government

The Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically disrupted our lives and revealed features--both strengths and weaknesses--of the economy and government that may not have been clear or seemed relevant before. In this research project, we investigate whether th...
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Sandra Goff
Countries

Understanding behavioral barriers to demand for domestic violence services

Domestic violence (DV), defined as stalking, rape, or physical violence, is a global problem with 35% of women worldwide reporting experiencing DV (WHO 2017). More than 12 million people experience domestic violence in the U.S. each year (National DV...
Primary Topic: Crime & policing
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Sofia Amaral
Countries

The welfare effect on households of social isolation

This project studies the welfare effects of social isolation due to the Covid-19 outbreak. In particular, we are interested in measuring the potential negative welfare effects on household of having to be in quarantine with limited possibilities to b...
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Ola Andersson
Countries

The effect of Covid-19 on home prices and sales

I analyze the effect of Covid-19 on home prices and sales in the United States. I do so using a dataset on approved purchase mortgage applications. The mortgage data have many of the key variables also available in housing transaction data such as sa...
Primary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Elliot Anenberg
Countries

Online auction markets in the aftermath of Covid-19

An economically relevant implication of cities lockdowns, perhaps the most popular government policy enacted to limit Covid-19 virus contagion, is putting a stop to retail markets and parallelly boost online ones. In this paper we leverage rich data ...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Francisco Alvarez-Gonzalez

How does the Covid-19 outbreak affect people’s expectation about the macroeconomy?

We conduct an incentivized online experiment to investigate the effect of Covid-19 on people’s expectation about the macroeconomy including economic growth rate, inflation rate, house price, and personal consumption, saving, and investment. We elic...
Lead investigator: King King Li
Countries

Covid disruptions and resilience of retail food prices around the world

This project will use new price indexes to conduct nearly real-time monitoring of retail prices by food group and nutrient composition, measuring month-to-month changes in the cost and affordability of nutritious diets in various countries around the...
Primary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: William A. Masters

Social distancing and school closures: documenting disparity in internet access among school children

Social distancing directives across the United States have led to school closures. Some districts are moving towards online instruction, but this requires internet access at home. We examine the factors that determine whether school children have acc...
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Ananya Sen
Countries

Internet use and job market sentiment: an early assessment of Covid-19 pandemic shock across the EU

This research project investigates to what extent the widespread of internet access cushioned the job market sentiment during the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The empirical strategy applies a novel regional data set, constructed from the Google...
Lead investigator: Marcin Wolski

Feverish stock price reactions to Covid-19

The market reactions to the 2019 novel Coronavirus disease (Covid-19) shed light on the importance of international trade and financial policies for firm value. Initially, investors priced negative consequences for internationally oriented US firms, ...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Stefano Ramelli
Countries

Epidemics, trade and containment policies

The unprecedented spread of Covid-19 has severely disrupted the global economy. This project intends to incorporate the canonical epidemiology mechanism into a two-country dynamic Melitz model to investigate quantitatively how health shock affects th...
Primary Topic: Recession & recovery
Secondary Topic: Trade & supply chains
Lead investigator: Kang Shi
Countries

Trust in the state and citizen cooperation: evidence from Pakistan

In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, we are conducting a randomized controlled trial in Pakistan. We aim to test the effectiveness of different information treatments designed to increase citizens’ trust in the government, specifically the gove...
Lead investigator: Adnan Khan
Countries

The trade-offs between economy and health: an assessment of Covid-19 policies in Japan

The goal of this project is to assess the macroeconomic consequence of Japanese economic and health policies in the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Based on Eichenbaum-Rebelo Trabandt (2020)'s pandemic macro model, we (i) distinguish tested/non-teste...
Primary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: Munechika Katayama
Countries

The shadow economy during Covid-19: effects of the pandemic on dark web marketplaces

The shadow economy is a substantial part of economic activity in normal times. During the current global pandemic, governments have imposed very severe regulations on labour, movement, goods and service markets. Therefore, we would expect that some e...
Lead investigator: Abeer Yehia

The global Covid-19 student survey

The global Covid-19 student survey aims to gauge university students’ reactions to the current Covid-19 pandemic and their expectations about the future, particularly as they enter the job market. The survey aims to document how students’ studies...
Secondary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: David A. Jaegar
All