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.
When school closes, dad works and mum stays home?
What is the division of child care between mothers and fathers, and how does this division affect labor supply? The spread of Covid-19 has led to temporary closures of childcare facilities and schools in many countries. This is particularly challengi...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Omar Bamieh
Countries
How contagious is a pandemic to the housing market? evidence from day-by-day sales and minute-by-minute bids after a Covid-19 policy intervention
We exploit day-by-day transaction and minute-by-minute auction data from Norway in order to estimate the effect on the housing market of the government intervention on 12 March 2020 and further effects from economic relief packages announced on 20 Ma...
Primary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Andre K. Anundsen
Countries
The tradeoff between healthcare and income contributions during the Covid-19 pandemic
We investigate the trade-off between public support in the form of charitable contributions to healthcare needs versus income support for displaced workers during the Covid-19 pandemic. We conducted a nationwide incentivized experiment in the United ...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Samir Huseynov
Countries
Covid-19 and attitudes about markets and government
The Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically disrupted our lives and revealed features--both strengths and weaknesses--of the economy and government that may not have been clear or seemed relevant before. In this research project, we investigate whether th...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Sandra Goff
Countries
Labor market policies during a pandemic
Many countries have introduced lockdowns to fight Covid-19, which has required the shuttering of many businesses and dramatically increased unemployment. We study the interaction of lockdowns and employment support programs in an epidemiological SEIR...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Secondary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: Andrew Glover
Countries
Youth empowerment in Bolivia
We evaluate a program that aims to help vulnerable youth aged 15-18 find a job, improve their working conditions and strengthen their income generation capacity. In order to achieve these goals, the program, which is implemented in four regions of Bo...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Selim Gulesci
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
The effect of Covid-19 on home prices and sales
I analyze the effect of Covid-19 on home prices and sales in the United States. I do so using a dataset on approved purchase mortgage applications. The mortgage data have many of the key variables also available in housing transaction data such as sa...
Primary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Elliot Anenberg
Countries
The welfare effect on households of social isolation
This project studies the welfare effects of social isolation due to the Covid-19 outbreak. In particular, we are interested in measuring the potential negative welfare effects on household of having to be in quarantine with limited possibilities to b...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Ola Andersson
Countries
Understanding behavioral barriers to demand for domestic violence services
Domestic violence (DV), defined as stalking, rape, or physical violence, is a global problem with 35% of women worldwide reporting experiencing DV (WHO 2017). More than 12 million people experience domestic violence in the U.S. each year (National DV...
Primary Topic: Crime & policing
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Sofia Amaral
Countries
Covid disruptions and resilience of retail food prices around the world
This project will use new price indexes to conduct nearly real-time monitoring of retail prices by food group and nutrient composition, measuring month-to-month changes in the cost and affordability of nutritious diets in various countries around the...
Primary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: William A. Masters
How does the Covid-19 outbreak affect people’s expectation about the macroeconomy?
We conduct an incentivized online experiment to investigate the effect of Covid-19 on people’s expectation about the macroeconomy including economic growth rate, inflation rate, house price, and personal consumption, saving, and investment. We elic...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: King King Li
Countries
Epidemics, trade and containment policies
The unprecedented spread of Covid-19 has severely disrupted the global economy. This project intends to incorporate the canonical epidemiology mechanism into a two-country dynamic Melitz model to investigate quantitatively how health shock affects th...
Primary Topic: Recession & recovery
Secondary Topic: Trade & supply chains
Lead investigator: Kang Shi
Countries
Feverish stock price reactions to Covid-19
The market reactions to the 2019 novel Coronavirus disease (Covid-19) shed light on the importance of international trade and financial policies for firm value. Initially, investors priced negative consequences for internationally oriented US firms, ...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Stefano Ramelli
Countries
Internet use and job market sentiment: an early assessment of Covid-19 pandemic shock across the EU
This research project investigates to what extent the widespread of internet access cushioned the job market sentiment during the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The empirical strategy applies a novel regional data set, constructed from the Google...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Secondary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Marcin Wolski
Social distancing and school closures: documenting disparity in internet access among school children
Social distancing directives across the United States have led to school closures. Some districts are moving towards online instruction, but this requires internet access at home. We examine the factors that determine whether school children have acc...
Primary Topic: Schools, universities & training
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Ananya Sen
Countries
Changes in higher order risk attitudes during a pandemic: the impact of rapid increases in health background risk on financial decisions
Individuals make economic decisions while being exposed to a multitude of risks that they cannot completely control: risks such as pandemics, chronic illnesses, income instability or environmental hazards. One of these risks is the current coronaviru...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Abdul H. Kidwai
Countries
Heterogeneous vulnerability to the Covid-19 crisis in Japan
We study how the Covid-19 crisis could affect earnings inequality across heterogeneous individuals in Japan. We use the Employment Structure Basic Survey by Statistics Bureau of Japan to identify groups of workers who are more susceptible to the shoc...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Shinnosuke Kikuchi
Countries
Mapping the impact of Covid-19 on the distribution of youth-led businesses in Kenya
The Covid-19 pandemic is expected to impact economic activity in Kenya in many ways. Currently, there is a national curfew from 7 pm to 5 am with only essential services permitted to be open and extremely limited mobility. These conditions are likely...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Lead investigator: Julian Jamison
Countries
The shadow economy during Covid-19: effects of the pandemic on dark web marketplaces
The shadow economy is a substantial part of economic activity in normal times. During the current global pandemic, governments have imposed very severe regulations on labour, movement, goods and service markets. Therefore, we would expect that some e...
Primary Topic: Banks & financial markets
Lead investigator: Abeer Yehia
