Current Research
List viewEconomists 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.
Hate crime in time of the Corona
The news of the novel virus first reached the world when the World Health Organisation (WHO) confirmed the first case in China on December 31, 2019. As the danger it posed to the public grew and the virus spread first across China, then to Europe and...
Primary Topic: Crime & policing
Lead investigator: Joel Carr
Countries
The impact of Covid-19 lockdown and re-opening on the housing market: evidence from China
This paper evaluates the performance of the housing market in China after the Covid-19 outbreak and subsequent economy re-opening. We construct both daily and weekly housing price indices for more than 30 cities by analyzing 600 thousand housing tran...
Primary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Naqun Huang
Countries
Consumers' mobility, expenditure and online- offline substitution response to Covid-19: evidence from French transaction data
This paper investigates a number of general phenomena connected with consumer behaviour in response to a severe economic shock, using billions of French card transactions measured before and during the Covid-19 epidemic. We examine changes in consume...
Primary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: David Bounie
Countries
Trust and compliance to public health policies in time of Covid-19
The Covid-19 crisis has led to fast policy responses all over the world to reduce social interaction and limit contagion. Using Google mobility data at regional level in Europe, we study whether the compliance to containment policies depends on the l...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Olivier Bargain
Explaining governors’ response to the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States
What is the response of US governors to the Covid-19 pandemic? In this research note, we explore the determinants of implementing stay-at-home orders, focusing on governors’ characteristics. In our most conservative estimate, being a Democratic gov...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Leonardo Baccini
Countries
Seller reputation and price gouging: evidence from the Covid-19 pandemic
We test the theory that seller reputation moderates the effect of demand shocks on a seller's propensity to price gouge. From mid January to mid March 2020, 3M masks were priced 2.72 times higher than Amazon sold them in 2019. However, the diffe...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Lead investigator: Luis Cabral
Civic capital and social distancing: evidence from the response to Covid-19 in Italy and Germany
Social distancing can succeed in slowing the spread of Covid-19 if citizens voluntary comply with it and internalize the cost of their mobility on others. How do civic values mediate this process? Using data on individual mobility across Italian prov...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Ruben Durante
Poverty and economic dislocation reduce compliance with Covid-19 shelter-in-place protocols
Shelter-in-place policies reduce social contact and mitigate the spread of Covid-19. Inconsistent compliance with social distancing creates local and regional interpersonal transmission risks. Using county-day measures on population movement derived ...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Austin L. Wright
Countries
Covid-19, firm exposure, and firm value: a tale of two lockdowns
We study how a public health crisis affects firms at different phases of outbreak. Using an event study approach, we find that the stock market in China responded significantly to two symbolic events in the outbreak of Covid-19: (1) the lockdown of H...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Lead investigator: Haoyuan Ding
Countries
Compliance with Covid-19 social-distancing measures in Italy: the role of expectations and duration
We study how intentions to comply with the self-isolation restrictions introduced in Italy to mitigate the Covid-19 epidemic respond to the length of their possible extension. Based on a survey of a representative sample of Italian residents (N=894),...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Guglielmo Briscese
Countries
The Covid-19 pandemic: government vs. community action across the United States
Are lockdown policies effective at inducing physical distancing to counter the spread of VIVID-19? Can less restrictive measures that rely on voluntary community action achieve a similar effect? Using data from 40 million mobile devices, we find that...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: David Van Dijcke
Countries
Epidemic spreads of Covid-19 narratives and their effect on financial phenomena.
We identify and retrieve the most salient Covid-19 narratives and their evolution over time via text mining on daily open-ended questionnaires sent to US stockholders since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. This data is complemented with over 3...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Secondary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Daniel Borup
Countries
Social distancing, internet access and inequality
We use data provided by Safegraph for the purposes of studying the spread of Covid-19 during February, March 2020 and the first week of April 2020. This data is derived from a panel of around 19 million devices that collect anonymous location data. E...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Lesley Chiou
Countries
Rationing social contact during the Covid-19 pandemic: transmission risk and social benefits of US locations
To prevent the spread of Covid-19, some types of stores and gathering places have been shut down while others remain open. The decision to shut down one type of location and leave another open constitutes a judgement about the relative danger and ben...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Seth Benzell
Countries
Banks as bridges? firm funding during the Covid-19 cash crunch
We conduct face-to-face interviews with the Heads of Credit of over 400 banks in 35 countries in Emerging Europe, Asia and the Middle East to collect data on these banks’ Covid-19 policies. We cover whether banks temporarily deferred payments by ex...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Lead investigator: Cagatay Bircan
Viral narratives: evidence from media outlets during Covid
Culture provides heuristics for decision-making that are developed as part of the evolutionary process (Richardson and Boyd, 1985, Nunn 2015). In this project, we aim to trace the evolution of narratives as a particular form of heuristic regarding th...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Lessons from history
Lead investigator: Arthur Blouin
Countries
Political beliefs affect compliance with Covid-19 social distancing orders
Social distancing is vital to mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus. We use geolocation data to document that political beliefs present a significant limitation to the effectiveness of state-level social distancing orders. Residents in Republi...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Marcus Painter
Countries
First to reach is last to forgive: evidence from the stock market impact of Covid-19
During December of 2019, the world became aware of a new global-scale threat called at first as Coronavirus, which changed the lives of millions of people around the globe. The coronavirus had multiple impacts regarding public policies, economic prod...
Primary Topic: Recession & recovery
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Sherif M. Hassan
Covid-19 and investor behavior
In the beginning of January 2020, the Chinese authorities identified a novel type of the coronavirus, which rapidly spread from China all over the world. The World Health Organization characterized the spread of the novel coronavirus officially as a ...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Regina Ortmann
Countries
How does household spending respond to an epidemic? consumption during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic
We explore how household consumption responds to epidemics, utilizing transaction-level household financial data to investigate the impact of the Covid-19 virus. As the number of cases grew, households began to radically alter their typical spending ...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Scott R. Baker
Countries
