Current Research
Map 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.
Understanding Society Covid-19 study
Understanding Society has launched a new monthly survey to look at the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the UK population. This has been funded by ESRC though the study’s discretionary budget and a £200k award from the Health Foundation. The ...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Michaela Benzeval
Countries
Covid-19: supporting parents, adolescents and children during epidemics (Co-SPACE)
Covid-19 and the related public health measures have led to major disruptions to families’ lives, with different pressures arising for children, young people and their families over time. There is some indication from research during epidemics in o...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Polly Waite
Supporting fiscal policy decisions in the crisis
We are going through an economic crisis. The government has responded with an unprecedented policy package, costing many tens of billions of pounds over just a few months – paying for employees to be furloughed, making payments to the self-employed...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: Paul Johnson
Countries
Impact of Covid-19 on staff mental health and well-being in SMEs: strategies and interventions to support workforce and boost productivity in the UK
Covid-19 pandemic has led governments globally to respond with unprecedented lockdown and economic measures to combat spread of the disease, and support workers and businesses. The pandemic presents a real threat to small and medium sized enterprises...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Prasanta Kumar Dey
Countries
The impact of Covid-19 on economic inequality and employment progression
The applicants have already collected novel survey data from a large representative sample of UK workers on 25th March 2020. We find large and significant differences in the impact of the economic disruption across workers of different income levels,...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Abigail Adams-Prassl
Countries
English longitudinal study of ageing Covid-19 substudy
The Covid-19 crisis is having an unprecedented impact on people's lives from the perspectives of their health, psychological wellbeing, social activity, employment and financial circumstances. Older people are at high risk because of the presenc...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Andrew Steptoe
Countries
Where does work belong anymore? The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on working in the UK
The Covid-19 outbreak has forced companies to embrace home-based working (HBW) at such speed that they have had little opportunity to consider the impact on their workers. It can be argued that the crisis has led to the most significant, intensive so...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Abigail Marks
Countries
Welfare at a (social) distance: accessing social security and employment support during the Covid-19 crisis and its aftermath
The benefits system is crucial to supporting people during, and after, the Covid-19 crisis but is under extraordinary pressure from an unprecedented wave of new Universal Credit (UC) applications. The benefits system therefore faces two significant c...
Primary Topic: Public spending, taxes & debt
Secondary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Lisa Scullion
Countries
Economic narratives and policy ppinions: a survey experiment on Covid-19 stories
Narratives may impact people’s beliefs on relevant policy issues, and political context may mediate these effects. Indeed, some specific contexts may be more easily swayed by certain stories that provide explanations for current social and economic...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Armenak Antinyan
Countries
The impact of the Covid-19 crisis on nutrition
A major challenge facing policymaking during the Covid-19 crisis is ensuring all households have access to a nutritious diet. The Department of Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) have provided supermarkets with a list of 1.5 million vulner...
Primary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Martin O'Connell
Countries
Covid-19 and crime in England
The Covid-19 outbreak has changed the landscape for both licit and illicit activities. This project addresses the impact of the crisis on the latter by examining its effect on crime and criminal outcomes in England. The effect is prompted due to chan...
Primary Topic: Crime & policing
Lead investigator: Kriakos C. Neanidis
Countries
Tracking the Covid-19 crisis with high-resolution transaction data
Financial and payments systems throughout the world generate a vast amount of naturally occurring, and digitally recorded, transaction data, but national statistical agencies mainly rely on surveys of much smaller scale for constructing official econ...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Vasco M. Carvalho
Countries
Covid-19: burden and impact in care homes – a mixed methods study
The Covid-19 pandemic poses a substantial risk to elderly and vulnerable care home residents and Covid-19 can spread rapidly in care homes. We have national, daily data on people with Covid-19 and deaths, but there is no similar data for care homes. ...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Charities & volunteering
Lead investigator: Laura Shallcross
Countries
Agreements must be kept? Residential leases during Covid-19
This paper studies how a Covid-19 lockdown affected residential lease payments. Survey data on 1511 Israeli renter households show nearly one in eight households not paying full rent during the lockdown, with these households holding back, on average...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Itai Ater
Countries
Lockdown and voting behaviour: a natural experiment on postponed elections during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The goal of this paper is to study the impact of the lockdown policy on voting behaviour, during the Covid-19 pandemic. We focus on France, where a differential lockdown was implemented across departments, based on the local diffusion of the disease....
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Nations, regions & cities
Lead investigator: Tommaso Giommoni
Countries
Small business under the Covid-19 crisis: expected short- and medium-run effects of anti-contagion and economic policies
During the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) crisis, governments around the world have implemented large-scale anti-contagion policies to contain the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in combination with a series of economic policies to mitigate the econom...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Secondary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Kohei Kawaguchi
Countries
The impact of Covid-19 on small business employment and hours: real-time estimates with homebase data
We use worker-firm matched data from Homebase to construct new real-time estimates of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on employment and hours worked of small businesses. We find four key results: (1) employment of small businesses in four of the ...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Secondary Topic: Business, big & small
Lead investigator: Andre Kurmann
Countries
Helping families help themselves during stay-at-home orders: effects of a mobile phone intervention to address child maltreatment and violent parent-child Interactions
Lockdown measures imposed throughout the world to contain the spread of the Covid-19 have drastically changed household dynamics. The stay-at-home orders, together with the temporary closure of schools and the change to virtual education schemes, hav...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Sofia Amaral
Countries
Impacts of Covid-19 on rural households in Bangladesh
The Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI) is conducting a survey of rural households in Bangladesh to better understand Covid-19’s impacts on vulnerable people and guide the development of policy responses that improve social protection. This pho...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Peter Morgan
Countries
Attitudes towards debt in corporate decision-making: evidence from the Covid-19 pandemic
We study the e?ect of an entrepreneur’s attitude towards debt on the financial policies of the businesses they run. Using a survey of 1,009 Finnish SMEs, we test whether a manager’s attitude towards debt affects their likelihood of using debt-bas...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Business, big & small
Lead investigator: Mikael Paaso
Countries
