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.
Conflict in Africa during Covid-19: social distancing, food vulnerability and welfare response
We study the effect of social distancing, food vulnerability, welfare and labour Covid-19 policy responses on riots, violence against civilians and food-related conflicts. Our analysis uses georeferenced data for 24 African countries with monthly loc...
Primary Topic: Crime & policing
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Roxana Gutiérrez-Romero
Covid-19: industry level origins of changes in economic welfare
We provide an analysis of how the decline in aggregate UK economic welfare caused by Covid-19 is related to industry-level measures of economic activity. By exploiting data on asset prices, we perform our analysis in real time. We find significant as...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Harjoat S. Bhamra
Countries
Economic policy responses to a pandemic: developing the Covid-19 economic stimulus index
In this project, we conduct a comprehensive review of different economic policy measures adopted by 166 countries as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic and create a large database including fiscal, monetary, and exchange rate measures. Furthermore, ...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Ceyhun Elgin
Covid 19: a new challenge for the European monetary union
Although the pandemic was an exogenous shock, it triggered portfolio rebalancing in the Euro Area (EA) implying a divergence of sovereign risk premia in the first phase of the crisis eventually followed by a narrowing of the spreads. We estimate the ...
Primary Topic: Public spending, taxes & debt
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Anne-Laure Delatte
Risk perception and oil and gas markets under pandemic: evidence from Covid-19
The novel coronavirus (Covid-19) exposed individuals and investors to a great uncertainty about its short- and long-term health and economic ramifications, especially in the early days and weeks of the outbreak. This study documents oil and gasoline ...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Behzod B. Ahundjanov
Estimating the costs and benefits of mandated business closures in a pandemic
Typical government responses to pandemics involve social distancing measures implemented to curb disease propagation. We evaluate the impact of state-mandated business closures in the context of the Covid-19 crisis in the US. Using state-level variat...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Jean-Noel Barrot
Countries
Public firm borrowers of the us paycheck protection program
We provide an initial assessment of the US Paycheck Protection Program by studying the 273 public firms that received a total of $929 million in loans between April 7-27, 2020. Despite receiving significant media coverage, these firms comprise 0.3% o...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Anna Cororaton
Countries
Grey rhinos in financial markets and venue selection: the case of Covid-19
We investigate the effects of the Covid-19-induced shock in financial markets on aggregate venue selection/market share and market quality. We find that the shock is linked with an economically significant loss of market share by dark pools to lit ex...
Primary Topic: Banks & financial markets
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Gbenga Ibikunle
Asset price expectations during the financial crash of the Covid-19 pandemic
We measure daily price expectations about the share prices of six well-known publicly traded companies in the U.S. in an incentivized online experiment for a period of three months. Coincidentally, our experiment started on 19/02/2020, just one day b...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Carlos Cueva
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
The responses of consumption and prices in Japan to the Covid-19 crisis and the Tohoku earthquake
This note compares the responses of consumption and prices to the Covid-19 shock and another large-scale natural disaster that hit Japan, the Tohoku earthquake in March 2011. The comparison shows that the responses of supermarket sales and prices at ...
Primary Topic: Lessons from history
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Tsutomu Watanabe
Countries
What do we learn from SARS-CoV-1 to SARS-CoV-2 evidence from global stock markets
This paper studies global stock market reactions to Covid-19 outbreaks caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2. The stock markets in countries that suffered from 2003 SARS diseases caused by a similar virus (SARS-CoV-1) react more quickly and strongly to the ...
Primary Topic: Lessons from history
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Hong Ru
Market reactions to the arrival and containment of Covid-19: an event study
We study the short-term market reactions of US and European stocks during the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. Employing an event study, we document that stocks react significantly negative to the announcement of the first death in a given country...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Thomas Heyden
Do Environmental, Societal, and Governance (ESG) efforts make firms less vulnerable to financial market shocks? Evidence from the Covid-19 pandemic
Previous research indicates that stocks of companies endowed with high levels of Environmental, Societal, and Governance (ESG) responsibility characteristics fared better during the financial crisis of 2008-2009. But it is not known why this happens,...
Primary Topic: Banks & financial markets
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Markku Kaustia
Countries
The impact of Covid-19 on us stock market: Fama-French models
The paper evaluates the performance of Fama-French models on US stock during Covid-19. All data used in constructed models have origination from Fama-French official website from 1st January 2000 to 31st March 2020. (Fama and French 2020). The result...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Dominik Horvath
Countries
Covid-19 information and demand for protective gear in the UK
Amid the Covid-19 crisis in the UK, we study the demand and willingness to pay for hand sanitiser gel, disposable face masks and disposable gloves, and the role of information on tested people and Covid-19 deaths in explaining the demand and willingn...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Sonia Oreffice
Countries
Disasters and defaults
How does the risk of a disaster, such as a climate disaster or an epidemic, affect the default risk of a sovereign country and its ability to issue debt? To analyze this question, we introduce disaster risk into a small open economy model with endoge...
Primary Topic: Recession & recovery
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Toan Phan
Debt sharing after Covid-19: how the direct involvement of EU institutions impacts the recovery path of a member state.
The substantial risk to public health posed by the emergence of Covid-19 has resulted in many European Governments taking unprecedented action to arrest the spread of the virus. Administrative closures across a number of economies has resulted in a c...
Primary Topic: Recession & recovery
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Kieran McQuinn
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
