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.
Well-being, religious beliefs and virtual relations at the time of Covid-19 lockdown
Covid-19 social distancing and lockdown are affecting individual lifestyles. We created a socio-economic survey addressed to a representative sample of the Italian (N=1,000) and US (N=1,400) population, focusing on three aspects of this phenomenon. (...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Luigino Bruni
Solidarity and fairness in times of crisis
In a large-scale survey experiment, we examine how the Covid-19 pandemic causally affects key components of people's moral perspective. We investigate whether the crisis moves people towards solidarity, how it affects their attitudes to inequali...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Alexander W. Cappelen
Countries
Changes in preferences due to Covid-19: a longitudinal study from the northern Finland birth cohorts
Remarkable events such as large pandemics (Covid-19) can presumably cause changes in people’s preferences, e.g. in their attitudes towards risk-taking and trust. These effects can be permanent, or at least persist for a long time. We explore the ef...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Marko Korhonen
Countries
Living at the peak: health and public finance during the Covid-19 pandemic
This paper provides novel evidence for the determinants of preferences for public health and the willingness to pay for health services using a survey experiment implemented during the third week of the lock-down in Spain. At the time of our experime...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Dirk Foremny
Countries
Coronavirus perceptions and economic anxiety
We provide one of the first systematic assessments of the development and determinants of economic anxiety at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Using a global dataset on internet searches and two representative surveys from the US, we document a...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Thiemo Fetzer
Countries
The impact of Covid-19 on violence against women and children in Germany
To contain the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, nearly a quarter of the world’s population is currently under lockdown or practicing physical distancing. These measures may have inadvertent consequences. In this project, we study the implications o...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Cara Ebert
Countries
Stability of economic preferences in times of crisis
Economic preferences such as risk, time, and social preferences play an important role for a wide range of individual behavior and outcomes as well as aggregated economic variables (e.g. GDP growth, volume of trade between countries). While neoclassi...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Daniel Engler
Countries
The youth and Covid-19: how to communicate effectively the emergency
At the beginning of the spread of Covid-19 in Italy, before the introduction of the lockdown “stay at home” measures in the whole country, in order to slow the rate of infection, the Government pushed for self-imposed measures of social distance ...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Vincenzo Carrieri
Countries
Our relationship with food during the Covid-19 pandemic
It has been clear for many years that policies and strategies are needed to transform towards more sustainable food systems. Now during the Covid-19 pandemic, food production, processing and distribution systems have been put under severe pressure. A...
Primary Topic: Recession & recovery
Secondary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Jeremy Millard
The causal influence of information about Covid-19 on laypersons trust in government, perception of their living conditions, and economic expectations
The current Covid-19 crisis has profound effects around the world. A potentially important factor for the perception of the crisis by laypersons appears to be the specific type of information they receive. Focusing on two emerging markets, Thailand a...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Bernd Hayo
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
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
Risk taking during a global crisis: evidence from Wuhan
We conducted a repeated survey on risk taking behavior across a panel of subjects in Wuhan, China – ground zero of the Coronavirus pandemic – before and after the outbreak began. Our baseline survey was administered on October 16th, 2019 among gr...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Di Bu
Countries
Expectations and behavior of firms in response to the Covid-19 pandemic
In March 2020, the German government implemented measures in response to the COVID19 pandemic that effectively led to a shutdown of a significant share of the economy. We study how firms adjusted to the ensuing crisis along different margins, includi...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Secondary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Sebastian Link
Countries
Labor market outcomes and time use during the Coronavirus outbreak
This project will study labor market outcomes and time use by US households during the 2020 Coronavirus outbreak. We are particularly interested in the effect of the outbreak on three interrelated areas. First, how did the outbreak impact labor marke...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Alexander Bick
Countries
Political polarization, social fragmentation, and cooperation during a pandemic
We study the impact of political polarization on the willingness of people to comply with social distancing directives during the Covid-19 pandemic. We find a reduced compliance with these measures when the state governor differs from the preferred p...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Boriana Miloucheva
Countries
Income and wealth shocks and expectations during the Covid-19 pandemic
In early April 2020 we conducted a survey on a representative sample of more than 8,000 US households to study the effect of the coronavirus crisis on household income and retirement wealth, households' expectations about the recovery, and the i...
Primary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Secondary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: Tobin Hanspal
Countries
Labour supply in the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic: empirical evidence on hours, home office, and expectations
Using a survey module administered in late March 2020, we analyze how working hours change under the social distancing regulations enacted to fight the Covid-19 pandemic. We study the Netherlands, which are a prototypical Western European country, bo...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Hans-Martin von Gaudecker
Countries
Covid-19 and small firms: expectations, relief take-up and firm dynamics
Many small businesses have already been deeply affected by the Covid-19 crisis, leading them to lay off employees, temporarily close shop, or go out of business completely. In response, governments have passed specific provisions to help support smal...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Lead investigator: John Eric Humphries
Countries
The short-term effect of quarantine requirement on domestic violence
Quarantines implemented worldwide following the spread of the coronavirus resulted in many people having to spend more time with their families and partners, which can potentially lead to an increase in intra-family violence. Our study seeks to asses...
Primary Topic: Crime & policing
Secondary Topic: Public spending, taxes & debt
Lead investigator: M. Amelia Gibbons
Countries
