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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.

Understanding the rise of domestic violence during the Covid-19 pandemic. Evidence from Spain.

Domestic Violence can have serious negative consequences, with wide-ranging psychological, economic and physical effects for women and children over their lifetimes. Early evidence from most affected countries (China, Italy, Spain) suggests that dome...
Primary Topic: Crime & policing
Lead investigator: Daniel Fernandez-Kranz
Countries

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...
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...
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Marina Della Giusta
Countries

Nowcasting (real-time estimates of) aggregate economic activity and financial stability risks using national payment system data during Covid-19 outbreak.

Our goal is to construct a reliable measure to estimate the economic activity and financial stability risk in real time. We use a unique dataset obtained from the National Payment System (NPS) of the Bank of Russia. Dataset is updated daily and conta...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Lead investigator: Anna Burova
Countries

Covid-19, stay-at-home orders and well-being: evidence from Google trends

We investigate the impact of the government response to Covid-19 on health and well-being using Google Trends Data. More precisely, we aim to test the impact of stay-at home orders on 12 Google Trends topics related to health and well-being in the US...
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Abel Brodeur

Tracking the economic impact of Covid-19 in Europe and the United States

We use high-frequency indicators available with little or no delay to obtain estimates of the economic impact of Covid-19 in Europe and the United States. We highlight the following findings. (1) Energy usage in Europe suggest that GDP has declined b...
Primary Topic: Recession & recovery
Secondary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Sophia Chen

Covid-19 and labour demand: evidence from Russia

The study is aimed to consider the impact of the Covid-19 on the labour market in Russia. In particular, we analyze the labour demand and its dynamics before and during the crisis, and estimate how the pandemic has changed the monetary value of the s...
Lead investigator: Sofia Paklina
Countries

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...
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...
Lead investigator: Shaun Hargreaves Heap
Countries

Entering the labour market during a pandemic: scarring effects and youth unemployment

This research aims to investigate the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic for labour market entrants, in particular the scarring effects on university graduates and the impact on youth unemployment. Macroeconomists have described the pandemic-drive...
Lead investigator: Francesco Amodio

Effects of Covid-19 pandemic on scientists’ research

The onset of Covid-19 has had an immediate impact on how scientists are able to use their time and resources to do research. However, there is a lack of data on how scientists are responding to this event and the heterogeneous disruptions to specific...
Lead investigator: Kyle Myers
Countries

Do Environmental, Societal, and Governance (ESG) efforts make firms less vulnerable to financial market shocks? Evidence from the Covid-19 pandemic

Previous research indicates that stocks of companies endowed with high levels of Environmental, Societal, and Governance (ESG) responsibility characteristics fared better during the financial crisis of 2008-2009. But it is not known why this happens,...
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Markku Kaustia
Countries

Hang up on stereotypes: domestic violence and anti-abuse helpline campaign

We estimate the consequences of a government-led anti-domestic-abuse campaign launched in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic on the number of calls to the italian domestic violence helpline. In the week after the start of the campaign, we document a ...
Primary Topic: Crime & policing
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Marco Colagrossi
Countries

The Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on inequality of opportunity in psychological distress in the UK

We use data from Wave 9 of UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS)and the April 2020 Wave of the UKHLS Covid-19 survey to compare measures of ex ante inequality of opportunity (IOp) in psychological distress, as measured by the General Health Questio...
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Apostolos Davillas
Countries

Job search during the Covid-19 crisis

This paper measures the job-search responses to the Covid-19 pandemic using real-time data on vacancy postings and ad views on Sweden's largest online job board. First, vacancy postings drop by 40%, similar to the US. Second, job seekers respond...
Lead investigator: Lena Hensvik
Countries

The effect of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) pandemic on risk and time preferences

We elicit incentivized measures of risk and time preferences in a sample of undergraduate students in Athens, Greece. While the original purpose of the study was to elicit a battery of psychological, behavioral and economic measures and traits that c...
Lead investigator: Andreas C. Drichoutis
Countries

Wage inequality and poverty effects of lockdown and social distancing in Europe

The “social distancing” measures taken to contain the spread of Covid-19 impose economic costs that go beyond the contraction of GDP. Since different occupations are not equally affected, this supply shock may have distributional implications. He...
Lead investigator: Juan C. Palomino

The Covid-19 pandemic and sovereign bond risk

Governments around the world are tackling the Covid-19 pandemic with a mix of public health, fiscal, macroprudential, monetary, or market-based policies. We aim to quantify the impact on European sovereign CDS spreads of the pandemic and the policy m...
Primary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Secondary Topic: Trade & supply chains
Lead investigator: Alin Marius Andries

Pro-sociality predicts health behaviors during the Covid-19 pandemic

Socially responsible behavior is crucial for slowing the spread of infectious diseases. However, economic and epidemiological models of disease transmission abstract from prosocial motivations as a driver of behaviors that impact the health of others...
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Pol Campos-Mercade
Countries

Covid-19 and financial markets: a panel analysis for European countries

In order to fight the economic consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, monetary and fiscal policy announced a large variety of support packages which are often unprecedented in size. In this paper, we provide an empirical analysis of the responses of ...
Secondary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: Jens Klose