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.
The real-time economic effects of Covid-19 in the United Kingdom
This project will examine the microeconomic impacts of the Covid pandemic and lockdown on UK businesses and its interaction with the UK’s decision to leave the European Union. The project will deliver two key outputs, which are fundamental to desig...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Secondary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Swati Dhingra
Countries
Covid-19 app store and data flow ecologies
Mobile phone applications (apps) have emerged as a key part of the response to Covid-19 around the world and are a feature of UK government plans to manage ‘phase two’. While raising concerns from privacy and security to the adoption rates requir...
Primary Topic: Science, technology & innovation
Secondary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Michael Dieter
Countries
A longitudinal mixed-methods population study of the UK during the Covid-19 pandemic: psychological and social adjustment to global threat
The impact of the Covid19 pandemic on public mental health will affect need for services, further progress or resolution of the pandemic and speed of economic recovery afterwards. Policymakers have emphasised the need for a whole population approach ...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Richard Bentall
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
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...
Primary Topic: Schools, universities & training
Secondary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Daniel Morales
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
Well-being, religious beliefs and virtual relations at the time of Covid-19 lockdown
Covid-19 social distancing and lockdown are affecting individual lifestyles. We created a socio-economic survey addressed to a representative sample of the Italian (N=1,000) and US (N=1,400) population, focusing on three aspects of this phenomenon. (...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Luigino Bruni
Our relationship with food during the Covid-19 pandemic
It has been clear for many years that policies and strategies are needed to transform towards more sustainable food systems. Now during the Covid-19 pandemic, food production, processing and distribution systems have been put under severe pressure. A...
Primary Topic: Recession & recovery
Secondary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Jeremy Millard
Epidemic spreads of Covid-19 narratives and their effect on financial phenomena.
We identify and retrieve the most salient Covid-19 narratives and their evolution over time via text mining on daily open-ended questionnaires sent to US stockholders since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. This data is complemented with over 3...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Secondary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Daniel Borup
Countries
Expectations and behavior of firms in response to the Covid-19 pandemic
In March 2020, the German government implemented measures in response to the COVID19 pandemic that effectively led to a shutdown of a significant share of the economy. We study how firms adjusted to the ensuing crisis along different margins, includi...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Secondary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Sebastian Link
Countries
The early effects of coronavirus-related social distancing restrictions on brands
This paper presents some of the first evidence on the effect of the spread of coronavirus (Covid-19) in the US on retail footfall traffic. The paper uses granular visit data from cell-phone tracking to estimate the shift in visits to different types ...
Primary Topic: Recession & recovery
Secondary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Catherine E. Tucker
Countries
The cost of staying open: voluntary social distancing and lockdowns in the us
In combating the spread of Covid-19, some governments have been reluctant to adopt lockdown policies due to their perceived economic costs. Such costs can, however, arise even in the absence of restrictive policies, if individuals' independent r...
Primary Topic: Recession & recovery
Secondary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: David Van Dijcke
Countries
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
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
Improving bureaucratic effectiveness during the Covid-19 crisis
We study whether positive and negative reinforcement messages to supervisors can help improve bureaucratic outcomes in times of crisis. In many parts of the developing world, it is difficult to get bureaucrats to complete tasks. Focusing on school pr...
Primary Topic: Schools, universities & training
Secondary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Catherine Rodríguez
Countries
Cross-country economic policy response to Covid-19
With the Covid-19 is still spreading at a rapid pace, the social distancing measures and economic policy response to Covid-19 varies a great deal across countries. For example, Germany’s response to the Covid-19 is very aggressive compared to Swede...
Primary Topic: Recession & recovery
Secondary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Sajid M. Chaudhry
Internet use and job market sentiment: an early assessment of Covid-19 pandemic shock across the EU
This research project investigates to what extent the widespread of internet access cushioned the job market sentiment during the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The empirical strategy applies a novel regional data set, constructed from the Google...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Secondary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Marcin Wolski
The trade-offs between economy and health: an assessment of Covid-19 policies in Japan
The goal of this project is to assess the macroeconomic consequence of Japanese economic and health policies in the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Based on Eichenbaum-Rebelo Trabandt (2020)'s pandemic macro model, we (i) distinguish tested/non-teste...
Primary Topic: Recession & recovery
Secondary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Munechika Katayama
Countries
Understanding the response to and recovery from the Covid-19 crisis among informal sector workers in urban India
In an ongoing randomized control trial, we study the impact of social networks on take-up of an aggregator service in Delhi, India that provides information on jobs, with subsequent implications on women and their spouses’ employment outcomes, inco...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Secondary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Farzana Afridi
Countries
