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.
Partisanship and public health: early evidence from Belgium during the Covid-19 pandemic
We investigate how partisanship affects the authority of the executive branch by looking at the relationship between electoral support for the governing coalition and Covid-19 deaths across Belgian municipal districts. Applying spatial autoregressive...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Arthur Dyevre
Countries
Remittances in the time of Covid-19. Evidence from Mexico
Remittance flows to low-and middle-income countries are one of the main contributors to economic growth and development. Since mid-1900s, these flows have exceeded official aid by a factor of three and they overtook foreign direct investment flows to...
Primary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Secondary Topic: Nations, regions & cities
Lead investigator: Lelys Dinarte
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
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
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
Covid-19, city lockdowns, and air pollution: evidence from China
The rapid spread of Covid-19 is a global public health challenge. To prevent the escalation of its transmission, China locked down one-third of its cities and strictly restricted personal mobility and economic activities. Using timely and comprehensi...
Primary Topic: Science, technology & innovation
Lead investigator: Guojon He
Countries
Political partisanship influences behavioral responses to governors' recommendations for Covid-19 prevention in the United States
Voluntary physical distancing is essential for preventing the spread of Covid-19. Political partisanship may influence individuals' responsiveness to recommendations from political leaders. Daily mobility during March 2020 was measured using loc...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Guy Grossman
Countries
Polarization and public health: partisan differences in social distancing during the Coronavirus pandemic
We study partisan differences in Americans' response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Political leaders and media outlets on the right and left have sent divergent messages about the severity of the crisis, which could impact the extent to which Republ...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Hunt Allcott
Countries
More than words: leaders’ speech and risky behavior during a pandemic
How do political leader’s words and actions affect people’s behavior? We address this question in the context of Brazil by combining electoral data and geo-localized mobile phone data for more than 60 million devices throughout the entire country...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Nicolas Ajzenman
Countries
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
Social connections with Covid-19-affected areas increase compliance with mobility restrictions
We study the role of social connections in households’ responses to mobility restrictions imposed amid the Covid-19 epidemic, using aggregated and anonymized Facebook data on social connections and mobile phone data for tracking movement. Measured ...
Primary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Ben Charoenwong
Countries
How does the Covid-19 crisis affect access to mental health care? evidence from an audit field experiment in the United States
Crises such as pandemics and recessions increase mental illness and suicidality. Care from mental health professionals (MHPs) such as counselors, therapists, and psychologists, can help people affected by these conditions. However, little is known as...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Patrick Button
Countries
Contagion and migration in South Asia
The lockdown in South Asia has led to mass migration of people back to their home towns/villages as the work opportunities in urban centres shrink or are no longer available. This poses a public health risk to rural areas as migrants may spread the v...
Primary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Jean Nahrae Lee
Countries
Belief in science influences physical distancing in response to Covid-19 lockdown policies
Physical distancing reduces transmission risks and slows the spread of Covid-19. Local and regional governments in the United States have issued shelter-in-place policies to mandate physical distancing. Yet compliance with these policies is uneven an...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Science, technology & innovation
Lead investigator: David Van Dijcke
Countries
Effect of Coronavirus on bank loans and credit rationing in an emerging market economy
Amid the outbreak of Covid-19, there have been a number of initiatives to keep businesses afloat. In this study, we aim to explore how the supply side, particularly the banking sector, responded to this shock by using highly granular Colombian loan-l...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Lead investigator: Yasin Kürşat Önder
Countries
