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.
Measuring risk and time preferences during the emergence of the Covid-19 crisis
We measure risk and time preferences, and examine the relationship with the disposition effect. Firstly, to estimate preferences, we use and compare several well-known quantitative and qualitative methods. Our main specification is an extended versio...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Pensions, savings & investment
Lead investigator: Jorgo T.G. Goossens
Countries
Covid-19-related school closures: impact on students in their final high school years
Students in their final high school years are faced with long lasting career decisions under high uncertainty and they are pressured to perform well in their high-stake exams. The government regulations following the Covid-19 pandemic such as school ...
Primary Topic: Schools, universities & training
Lead investigator: Malte Sandner
Countries
Pandemics meet democracy. experimental evidence from the Covid-19 crisis in Spain
The Covid-19 outbreak poses an unprecedented challenge for contemporary democracies. Despite the global scale of the problem, the response has been mainly national, and global coordination has been so far extremely weak. All over the world government...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Francesc Amat
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
Social cost with no political gain: the “Chinese virus” effect
Naming a contagious disease, such as Covid-19, by the geographic locality where the disease originates or starts, for example, Wuhan or China, may stigmatize specific ethnic groups related to that locality, and such stigmatizing behavior will further...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Yixin Liu
Countries
Containing the virus or reviving the economy? evidence from individual expectations during the Covid-19 epidemic
How does an epidemic affect individuals' expectation on economic prospects? We implement an incentivized longitudinal online survey with randomized controlled trials during the Covid-19 epidemic in China to answer this question. We find that low...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Keyang Li
Countries
Preferences and economic decision-making in the wake of Covid-19: experimental evidence from China
Using a large-scale experiment in China we study whether exposure to a major public health crisis affects the stability of economic preferences. We utilise a unique three-wave panel dataset of 539 students at Beijing Universities, collected in Octobe...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Paul Lohmann
Countries
Belief change to market economy or planned economy? shock from Covid-19
Covid-19 has caused panic buying, temporary supply shortage and soaring prices. The Chinese government has formulated restrictive policies to guide the market order. We are curious whether the epidemic had an impact on the belief in the economic syst...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Naixi Liu
Countries
Analysis of websites regarding firms’ reactions to corona pandemic in Germany
We analyze websites of about 1.3 Mio. firms in Germany twice a week searching for the term Corona and synonyms of it. Since our first collection of data on March 19th, 2020, the share of firms mentioning the pandemic raised by two percentage points w...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Lead investigator: Peter Winker
Countries
On the effects of Covid-19 on online labour markets: empirical evidence from Europe
In online labour market platforms, projects can be posted and completed anywhere in the world. They are – intensified by Covid-19 – at the core of the debate about the future of work and the conditions under which we work online. Using unique com...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Frank Mueller-Langer
Uncovering the effects of Covid-19 on wellbeing and economic decision-making
To counter the public health emergency caused by the spread of Covid-19, “stay-at-home” executive order have been issued in most states across the U.S.. Because of the social distancing measures, the fear of income and employment losses and the f...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Andreas Loschel
Countries
Covid-19, the stability of preferences and environmental choices
Recent studies and surveys show that Covid-19 not only poses a threat to individuals’ physical health, but also threatens individuals’ mental health due to income and employment losses, changes in daily routines and the general increased fear and...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Andreas Loschel
Countries
The impact of Covid-19 on paid and unpaid work in the family: an international comparison
The Covid-19 pandemic has led governments worldwide to lock down their counties for several weeks. With the aim to curb the spread of the virus, most people have had to stay at home, working from their dwelling, and schools are closed. The quarantine...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Lídia Farré
Household behaviour: the Covid-19 “dance” phase
Until a vaccine arrives, forecasting economic activity is even more difficult than usual. For example, in the UK it is striking to see the difference between the IMF’s baseline scenario GDP loss of 6.5% for 2020, and the Office for Budget Responsib...
Primary Topic: Recession & recovery
Secondary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Stefanie J. Huber
The implicit health-money trade-off in Covid-19 pandemic
The strategies to manage Covid-19 pandemic involve a challenging trade-off for policy-makers. On one hand, the closure of all non-essential economic activities (lockdown) helps to reduce the diffusion of the epidemic. On the other hand, lockdown come...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Vincenzo Carrieri
Countries
Life in social isolation
The global pandemic of Covid19 has forced many people around the world to suddenly live in social isolation. The consequences of mass-scale social isolation on individuals’ mental health and wellbeing are still unknown. In this project, we study th...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Marina Della Giusta
The economic impact of Covid-19 and subsequent debt relief policies
Our research project examines the economic effects of Covid-19 and subsequent debt and credit relief policies along the value chain. Our project examines the effects on the micro to small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) along the value chain as we...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Secondary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: Giacomo De Giorgi
Countries
Prediction bias in times of Covid-19: use of a linear infection-prediction model when the true model is exponential
The set of measures designed to halt the unrelenting transmission of Covid-19, prescribed by the World Health Organization and widely disseminated by local governments, include frequent washing of hands, use of hand sanitizers and face masks, social ...
Primary Topic: Science, technology & innovation
Lead investigator: Ritwik Banerjee
Trust in experts during an epidemic
Trust in science and experts is extremely important in times of epidemics to ensure compliance with public health measures. Yet little is known about how this trust evolves while an epidemic is underway. Understanding these processes is vital for pol...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Pietro Battiston
Countries
Maximizing effectiveness of policy-based responses to Covid-19: mapping citizens’ preferences over multi-dimensional trade-offs
At the onset of large-scale health crises such as the recent Covid-19 pandemic, the unavailability of reliable medicine-based responses implies that the role of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) and public health policies are essential in conta...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Shaun Hargreaves Heap
