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Current Research

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Economists 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.

World seaborne trade in real time: a proof of concept for building ais-based nowcasts from scratch

Maritime data from the Automatic Identification System (AIS) have emerged as a potential source for real time information on trade activity. However, no globally applicable end-to-end solution has been published to transform raw AIS messages into eco...
Primary Topic: Trade & supply chains
Lead investigator: Diego A. Cerdeiro

Trust in the healthcare system and Covid-19 treatment in the developing world – survey and experimental evidence from Armenia.

Covid-19 continues to spread across the globe at an exponential speed, infecting millions and overwhelming even the most prepared healthcare systems. Concerns are looming that the healthcare systems in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are mos...
Lead investigator: Armenak Antinyan
Countries

Governments’ responses to Covid-19 all around the world

Following the Covid-19 outbreak, governments all around the world have implemented public health and economic measures to contain the spread of the virus and to support the economy. This project aims at tracking governments’ responses to Covid-19 i...
Lead investigator: Simon Porcher

The idiosyncratic impact of an aggregate shock: the distributional consequences of Covid-19

Using new data from the Understanding Society: Covid-19 survey collected in April 2020, we show how the aggregate shock caused by the pandemic affects individuals across the distribution in the UK. The survey collects data from existing members of th...
Primary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Secondary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Michaela Benzeval
Countries

Consumer expectations around Covid-19: evolution over time

Since Apr 24, 2020, we have been collecting direct information on consumers’ expectations about the duration of social distancing rules, including stay-at-home and social-distancing rules, and of business closures, in the United States and Canada. ...
Secondary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: Fabian Lange
Countries

Shock salience and heterogeneity in individual behavior

We study heterogeneity in attitudes and behavior after the Covid-19 crisis in the population of international students across several university campuses in North America. More specifically, we study whether the response to the shock varies by field ...
Lead investigator: Livia Alfonsi
Countries

Covid 19: a new challenge for the European monetary union

Although the pandemic was an exogenous shock, it triggered portfolio rebalancing in the Euro Area (EA) implying a divergence of sovereign risk premia in the first phase of the crisis eventually followed by a narrowing of the spreads. We estimate the ...
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Anne-Laure Delatte

The economic effects of Covid-19 and credit constraints: evidence from Italian firms' expectations and plans

We investigate the economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and the role played by credit constraints in the transmission mechanism, using a novel survey of expectations and plans of Italian firms, taken just before and after the outbreak. Most firm...
Secondary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: Pierluigi Balduzzi
Countries

The heterogeneous labor market impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic

We study the distributional consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic's impacts on employment. Using CPS data on stocks and flows, we show that the pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing inequalities. Although employment losses have been widespread, ...
Lead investigator: Matias Cortes
Countries

Poverty and Covid-19 in developing countries

In March 2020, shelter-in-place and social-distancing policies have been enforced or recommended all over the world to fight the Covid-19 pandemic. However, strict containment is hardly achievable in low-income countries, as large parts of population...
Primary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Olivier Bargain

Managing the Covid-19 pandemic in poor urban neighbourhoods: the case of Ghana and South Africa

The novel Coronavirus, Covid-19, and measures to combat it are expected to have a significant impact on the physical and mental well being of all people, but especially those living in poor urban neighbourhoods. We are conducting a panel phone survey...
Primary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Isabel Gunther

Lives or livelihoods? perceived trade-offs and public demand for non-pharmaceutical interventions

We study the role of cost-benefit considerations in driving public demand for nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) during the Covid-19 pandemic. In a large-scale online survey experiment with a representative sample of the US population, we introdu...
Lead investigator: Sonja Settele
Countries

Effectiveness of government policies in response to the Covid-19 outbreak

This paper assesses the quantitative impact of government interventions on deaths related to the Covid-19 outbreak. Using daily data for 32 countries and relying on the stringency of the conducted policies, we find that the greater the strength of go...
Secondary Topic: Nations, regions & cities
Lead investigator: Theologos Dergiades

Civic capital and social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic

The success of non-pharmaceutical interventions to contain pandemics often depends greatly upon voluntary compliance with government guidelines. What explains variation in voluntary compliance? Using mobile phone and survey data, we show that during ...
Lead investigator: John M Barrios

Assessing impacts on and resilience to food insecurity amid the Covid-19 lockdowns in Nigeria

As of the end of May 2020, there have been over 9000 cases and over 260 deaths from Covid-19 in Nigeria and cases have been rising quickly in recent weeks. To prevent the spread of the virus, governments in multiple states have imposed lockdowns. Whi...
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Elena M Martinez
Countries

Families under confinement: Covid-19, domestic violence, and alcohol consumption

Evidence suggests that during the Covid-19 lockdown, alcohol consumption has increased and income has gone down among several households in Mexico City. The existing literature relates alcohol consumption and negative income shocks to a greater numbe...
Primary Topic: Crime & policing
Countries

Community health care and Covid-19 pandemic: experimental evidence from Uganda

The limited capacity of the health systems in many low-income countries, especially in rural areas, suggests that the rapid spreading of the Covid-19 virus could have huge consequences in those areas. On top of the direct impact of the virus, a growi...
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Martina Bjorkman-Nyqvist
Countries

Covid-19 and the demand for flexible annuities

The demand for voluntary lifetime annuities is low. Two potential driving mechanisms behind this phenomenon are uninsurable risk early in life and financial illiteracy. Covid-19 generates a large amount of uncertainty for workers. We measure preferen...
Lead investigator: Pim Koopmans
Countries

Risk perception and oil and gas markets under pandemic: evidence from Covid-19

The novel coronavirus (Covid-19) exposed individuals and investors to a great uncertainty about its short- and long-term health and economic ramifications, especially in the early days and weeks of the outbreak. This study documents oil and gasoline ...
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Behzod B. Ahundjanov

Improving task completion by school principals during the Covid-19 crisis

We study whether neutral, positive, or negative reinforcement messages given to schools’ principals can improve their bureaucratic efficiency in times of crisis. Under the Covid-19 health emergency urgency, the Ministry of Education asked all schoo...
Lead investigator: Daniel Morales