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.
Rescuing a `sick’ labour market: using online vacancy data to track Covid-19’s economic impact
This project aims to identify the impact of Covid-19 and consequent lockdown measures on labour demand, using unique real-time data on UK online job postings, combined with text analysis and causal econometric research designs. - Firstly, we will con...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Mirko Draca
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
Estimating the heterogeneous impact of Covid-19 on economic activity in Europe using high-frequency electricity market data
In response to the Covid-19 emergency, most countries introduced a series of social-distancing measures including lockdowns and businesses’ shutdowns. Therefore, official statistics indicate that virtually all developed economies experienced a sign...
Primary Topic: Nations, regions & cities
Lead investigator: Carlo Fezzi
Habit formation from corona lockdown
To prevent the spread of Covid-19, many countries have implemented different degrees of lockdowns, which has profoundly changed the way people live their lives. In our study, we investigate how habits change during and after the Corona lockdowns. We ...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Nora Szech
The political economy of lockdown: does free media make a difference?
This paper explores the role of the media in how governments are reporting on and responding to the Covid-19 pandemic. In countries with free media, more deaths increase the probability of imposing a lockdown and are associated with greater reduction...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Timothy Besley
Conflict in Africa during Covid-19: social distancing, food vulnerability and welfare response
We study the effect of social distancing, food vulnerability, welfare and labour Covid-19 policy responses on riots, violence against civilians and food-related conflicts. Our analysis uses georeferenced data for 24 African countries with monthly loc...
Primary Topic: Crime & policing
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Roxana Gutiérrez-Romero
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
Trade-offs in automated political advertising regulation: evidence from the Covid-19 pandemic
Digital platforms have experienced pressure to restrict and regulate political advertising content. This paper presents evidence of unintended consequences of restrictions on political ads related to the Covid-19 pandemic. We use data on more than 30...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Grazia Cecere
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...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Simon Porcher
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 ...
Primary Topic: Public spending, taxes & debt
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Anne-Laure Delatte
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
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...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Nations, regions & cities
Lead investigator: Theologos Dergiades
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 ...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Behzod B. Ahundjanov
How online gig economy reshapes the international labour market amid Covid-19
Enabled by the Internet technology, online digital employment platforms have presented opportunities for employers and freelancers to find each other regardless of their physical locations and at lower administrative and search costs. The evolution o...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Secondary Topic: Business, big & small
Lead investigator: Yuan Gao
Democracy, culture, and contagion: political regimes and countries responsiveness to Covid-19
A widely held belief is that autocratic governments have been more effective in reducing the movement of people to curb the spread of Covid-19. Using the Oxford Covid-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT), and a real-time dataset with daily informa...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Carl Benedikt Frey
Political institutions and policy responses during a crisis
Do countries with differing political institutions respond differently to a national crisis? The coronavirus pandemic, where almost all countries were hit by the same crisis in a short span of time, provides a rare opportunity to answer this question...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: Gaurav Chiplunkar
Estimating the costs and benefits of mandated business closures in a pandemic
Typical government responses to pandemics involve social distancing measures implemented to curb disease propagation. We evaluate the impact of state-mandated business closures in the context of the Covid-19 crisis in the US. Using state-level variat...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Jean-Noel Barrot
Countries
Information search and financial market performance under pandemic: evidence from Covid-19
The discovery, and subsequent spread, of the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) exposed both individuals and investors to a grave uncertainty about the potential health and economic ramifications of the virus, particularly in the early days and weeks of th...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: Behzod B. Ahundjanov
Countries
Should I stay or should I go (out): the role of trust and norms in disease prevention during pandemics
In this paper we construct country specific indices of mobility and trust. We use Google Covid 19 Community Mobility Reports for the former, and World Values Survey and the European Values Study for the latter. We find that the trust index has some p...
Primary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Secondary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Toker Doganoglu
Public firm borrowers of the us paycheck protection program
We provide an initial assessment of the US Paycheck Protection Program by studying the 273 public firms that received a total of $929 million in loans between April 7-27, 2020. Despite receiving significant media coverage, these firms comprise 0.3% o...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Anna Cororaton
Countries
