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.
Labor market flows and the Covid-19 economy
I examine labor market flows in the CPS through March 2020. Although there was a dramatic single month increase in the unemployment rate and exit rate from employment, most cyclical flows (hiring, employer-to-employer flows, quits) have not yet chang...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Eliza Forsythe
Countries
Adoption of telework and e-learning during Covid-19 lockdown
This paper studies: a) the impact of Covid-19 lockdown measures on the adoption of teleworking and e-learning, and b) its socioeconomic determinants. Using real-time data on Google search Trends aggregated at the province level in Italy, I study how ...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Marta C Lopes
Countries
Macroeconomic effects and spillovers among countries of the Covid-19 pandemic
Since December 2019, the Covid-19 pandemic spread worldwide from China, passing to Europe in February 2020, and lastly in the US, in March 2020. According to the Air Transport Association, in February 2020 the global growth rate of air passengers dem...
Primary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: Francesco Simone Lucid
The early effects of coronavirus-related social distancing restrictions on brands
This paper presents some of the first evidence on the effect of the spread of coronavirus (Covid-19) in the US on retail footfall traffic. The paper uses granular visit data from cell-phone tracking to estimate the shift in visits to different types ...
Primary Topic: Recession & recovery
Secondary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Catherine E. Tucker
Countries
Coronavirus disease 2019 and the global economy
Using daily data on the global coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) deaths, this paper investigates the corresponding effects on the global economic activity measured by the Baltic Exchange Dry Index (BDI). The empirical results based on a structural ...
Primary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: Hakan Yilmazkuday
Coronavirus effects on the U.S. unemployment: evidence from Google trends
This paper investigates the relationship between Google search queries of "coronavirus" and "unemployment" using daily data from the United States. The investigation is achieved by employing a structural vector autoregression mode...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Hakan Yilmazkuday
Countries
Staying home saves lives, really!
As coronavirus disease (Covid-19) is spreading around the world, many national and local governments have imposed social restrictive measures to limit the spread of the virus. Such quarantine measures in different cities across the world have brought...
Primary Topic: Crime & policing
Lead investigator: Soheil Shayegh
Countries
Covid-19 pandemic, public attention, and policy responses
Despite all countries being affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, the government's' responses have varied extensively in terms of speed, policy content, as well as the level of compulsion. We explore to what extent differences in the timing of...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Cevat Giray Aksoy
Using weekly financial and health diaries to track health and income effects of the Covid-19 outbreak and government response measures in rural Kenya
While the current number of Covid-19 cases is relatively limited in Kenya, the anticipation of Covid-19 arrives much earlier than any exponential growth of infections, and so do the measures in response to it. Even in the absence of Covid-19 cases, t...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Wendy Janssens
Countries
Shutdown policies and worldwide conflict
We provide real-time evidence on the impact of Covid-19 restrictions policies on conflicts globally. We combine daily information on conflict events and government policy responses to limit the spread of coronavirus to study how conflict levels vary ...
Primary Topic: Crime & policing
Lead investigator: Nicolas Berman
Compulsory face mask policies do not affect community mobility in Germany
There is currently a heated debate about making face masks compulsory in public spaces to contain Covid-19. A key concern is that such policies could lead to risk compensating behaviour and thereby undermine efforts to maintain social distancing and ...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Roxanne Kovacs
Countries
The economic effects of Covid-19 containment measures
Many countries around the world have implemented stringent containment measures to halt the spread of the 2019 coronavirus disease (Covid-19) and limit the number of fatalities. Though crucial to slow the course of the pandemic, these measures entail...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Pragyan Deb
Human behaviour, cultural narratives and the economy during and after Covid-19
This project focuses on the Culture-Based Development (CBD) aspects of the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic. It analyses cultural biases created through narratives and conveying old social constructs that generate socio-economic inequalities during an...
Primary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Annie Tubadji
Countries
The sooner, the better: the early economic impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions during the Covid-19 pandemic
The size of the economic shocks triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic and the effects of the associated non-pharmaceutical interventions have not been fully assessed because the official economic indicators have not been published. This paper provides e...
Primary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: Asli Demirgüç-Kunt
The cost of staying open: voluntary social distancing and lockdowns in the us
In combating the spread of Covid-19, some governments have been reluctant to adopt lockdown policies due to their perceived economic costs. Such costs can, however, arise even in the absence of restrictive policies, if individuals' independent r...
Primary Topic: Recession & recovery
Secondary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: David Van Dijcke
Countries
Economic determinants of violence in the home: the case of Sweden during Covid-19
Violence within the home is the most common form of interpersonal violence for women. While children and men are also victims of abuse of various kind within the family, intimate partner violence (IPV) committed by men against women is generally the ...
Primary Topic: Crime & policing
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Maria Perrota
Countries
Does the EU convergence machine still work and how will the Covid-19 crisis impact it?
Economic convergence has been one of the explicit goals of the EU from its very beginning. The prospect of higher living standards has undeniably been a major attraction of EU membership. Conversely, economic divergence may undermine support for the ...
Primary Topic: Nations, regions & cities
Secondary Topic: Public spending, taxes & debt
Lead investigator: Patrick Bisciari
The physical cost of the Covid-19 lockdown for non-professional athletes.
We analyze the participation of non-professional athletes (NPAs) to sporting events (road cycling or running) that take place annually in Italy or the UK (further countries may be added later, depending on data availability). The Covid-19 lockdown in...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Tommaso Reggiani
Covid-19, lockdown and health: the role of air pollution
This paper studies the impact of a prefecture’s lockdown measure in China (Out-side Hubei province), in response to the outbreak of Covid-19, on its air pollution and Covid-19 related health outcomes. In doing that, we use a difference-in-differenc...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Linyuan Huang
Countries
Understanding the rise of domestic violence during the Covid-19 pandemic. Evidence from Spain.
Domestic Violence can have serious negative consequences, with wide-ranging psychological, economic and physical effects for women and children over their lifetimes. Early evidence from most affected countries (China, Italy, Spain) suggests that dome...
Primary Topic: Crime & policing
Lead investigator: Daniel Fernandez-Kranz
Countries
