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.
The impact of shutdown policies on unemployment during a pandemic
We use high-frequency Google search data, combined with data on the announcement dates of nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) during the Covid-19 pandemic in U.S. states, to isolate the impact of NPIs on unemployment in an event-study framework. E...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Edward Kong
Countries
Covid-19 and educational inequality – evidence from Germany
In spring 2020, governments around the globe shut down schools to mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus. We conduct a large-scale survey in Germany to study parent-child time use during the educational shutdown. Focusing on differences across ...
Primary Topic: Schools, universities & training
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Elisabeth Grewenig
Countries
Disparate impacts of Covid-19 lockdowns in Pakistan affecting girls and rural
residents
In this article, we examine the feasibility of working and studying from home in Pakistan. We take advantage of the 2018–19 Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement (PSLM) Survey, released only weeks ago. PSLM is a nationally representative...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Syed Hasan
Countries
Covid-19 and the future of microfinance: evidence and insights from Pakistan
The Covid-19 pandemic threatens lives and livelihoods, and, with that, has created immediate challenges for institutions that serve affected communities. We focus on implications for local microfinance institutions in Pakistan, a country with a matur...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Kashif Malik
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
Identity in multicultural society
The project experimentally investigates the role of identity in shaping preferences and attitudes. A multidimensional definition of identity informs the work, with specific attention to differences between natives and immigrants. At this aim, we run ...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Natalia Montinari
Countries
Impact of Covid–19 lockdown on the socio-economic condition of informal sector wage workers in India
Outbreak of COVID – 19 pandemic, and nationwide unprecedented lockdown has brought a grinding halt to economic activities, adversely affecting the life and livelihood of informal sector wage workers. They are struggling on two fronts of life: one i...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Archanca Srivastava
Countries
Ownership and business resilience during a pandemic
Exploring how financial markets fare during the Covid-19 crisis, scholars have begun to probe into organizational factors at the firm level in order to understand the different response by companies. Our key goal is to test whether the involvement of...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Lead investigator: Mario Daniele Amore
Countries
The effect of social distancing on risk aversion, trust, and solidarity
The experiment investigates the causal effect of social distancing on behavioral traits that are important in interpersonal relationships. We exploit the different timing of stay-at-home orders issued during the Covid-19 outbreak as a natural experim...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Antonio Filippin
Countries
The effects of working from home on Covid-19 infections and production – a macroeconomic analysis for Germany
We study the impact of confinement on infection risk and on the German economy. We first document that regions whose industry structure allows for a large fraction of work to be done at home also experienced much fewer Covid-19 cases and fatalities. ...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Secondary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Harald Fadinger
Countries
Willingness to pay for morbidity and mortality risk reductions during an epidemic. Theory and preliminary evidence from the Covid-19 epidemic
As a result of the ongoing coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, individuals and governments around the world are undertaking very costly actions to prevent the rapid spread of the disease and potentially millions of deaths (e.g. social distancing interve...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Luciana Echazu
Countries
Coronavirus pandemic shock, economic preferences and beliefs: an online survey experiment
Preferences and beliefs (such as risk preferences), for individuals who experience dramatic natural disasters (such as a major hurricane), are unstable. The diversity and breadth of the Covid-19 pandemic provide a unique, although grime, opportunity ...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Raymond Duch
Robo-advisor adoption, willingness to pay, and trust—an experimental investigation pre and during Covid-19
We compare readiness to adopt and willingness to pay for (as a proxy for trust) financial advice provided three ways (algorithm, human, and a hybrid of algorithm and human) using an online and a computerized laboratory experiment. Our experiments wer...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Daniel Ben David
Countries
The effects of covid on women: work, housework and financial decisions
The outbreak of Covid-19 has affected lives of hundreds of thousands of men and women throughout the world. In Italy, the impact has been more severe than in the rest of Europe. Women are severely hit by the choc, both on their jobs and in their fami...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Daniela Del Boca
Countries
Be kind: domestic violence and mental health during a strict Covid-19 lockdown
The proposed study is going to exploit timing of a nationwide Covid-19 lockdown to estimate the impacts of social distancing on domestic violence incidents and mental health referrals using administrative data in New Zealand. To estimate local averag...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Crime & policing
Lead investigator: Kabir Dasgupta
Countries
Cross-country economic policy response to Covid-19
With the Covid-19 is still spreading at a rapid pace, the social distancing measures and economic policy response to Covid-19 varies a great deal across countries. For example, Germany’s response to the Covid-19 is very aggressive compared to Swede...
Primary Topic: Recession & recovery
Secondary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Sajid M. Chaudhry
Measuring worldwide Covid-19 attitudes and beliefs
We use a large-scale survey covering 58 countries and over 100,000 responses to study beliefs and attitudes towards citizens' and governments' responses to the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020. Data collection is ongoing and we hope to maint...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Dr. Christopher Roth
The Corona virus Covid-19 crisis
The research is based off the results of a 10-minute survey using the University's Qualtrics questionnaire system, surveying information on the potential personal impact of Covid-19 on one's own income and employment situation, personal hea...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Prof. Dr. John P. de New
The effect of shelter-in-place orders on domestic violence
As the coronavirus spreads across the United States, many states have enacted shelter-in-place orders to limit the growth of the pandemic. While these policies are designed to benefit public health, they may have harmful effects upon household welfar...
Primary Topic: Crime & policing
Lead investigator: Jeremy A. Cook
Countries
The short and long run impact of the “great lockdown”: lessons from Italy
This project aims to assess the impact of school and economic lockdowns on short-run outcomes (the spread of the Covid-19 pandemics) and on medium and long-run ones (effect on economic outcomes and school performance) by exploiting heterogeneity in t...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Nicola Borri
Countries