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.
Will Covid-19 change what the public expect of government?
Previous research on pandemics, infectious disease, and recession suggests that Covid-19 could have a significant impact on the public’s public policy preferences - and thus the environment in which policymakers will have to address the pandemic’...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: John Curtice
Countries
Pandemic policing: public attitudes towards compliance and organisational resilience
The UK’s Covid-19 response has provided the police with new powers which potentially impinge upon civil liberties, altering the nature of policing activities. National policing bodies have encouraged a compliance not coercion approach based upon th...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Sarah Charman
Countries
Covid-19 (mis)information exposure and messaging effects in the United Kingdom
This project will examine four specific research questions about Covid-19 information and beliefs. 1. How (mis)informed is the public about the Covid-19 pandemic? 2. In this time of crisis, are people making sense of the world through widespread adop...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Jason Reifler
Countries
CAGE research centre (centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy)
Research and working paper on increase in Google searches indicative of anxieties and economic fears.
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Thiemo Fetzer
British election study
Wave 20 of the BES internet panel will ask questions on Covid-19 and its impact on political opinion including exposure (individual and family), evaluations/handling and impact on issue position and salience.
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Edward Fieldhouse
Countries
Life with corona
IDS, ISDC and UNU-WIDER collecting real time data on the coronavirus and its social and economic impacts, to build a global knowledge base about how people are dealing with the epidemic (including on focus on trust, which was key in the response to t...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Nations, regions & cities
Lead investigator: Professor Patricia Justino
Trust and trustworthiness in national and global governance
An online national survey in the UK, US and Italy which includes questions 9 on Covid-19 and political trust. Focus groups exploring political trust in towns and cities relating to Covid-19.
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Will Jennings
Identity, inequality, and the media in Brexit-Covid-19-Britain
Covid-19 and Brexit are extraordinary social and political processes that are occurring simultaneously. These events are exposing the major inequalities that underpin British society across class, ethnic, national, migrant, generational and geographi...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Katharine Tyler
Countries
Transitions to more harmful forms of gambling during Covid-19 pandemic: behaviours and targeted marketing in young people and bettors on sport
Around 2 million people experience harms from gambling, and many gamble on live events (including sports) and online. The Covid-19 pandemic has precipitated unprecedented restrictions on people’s movements and interactions in public and private set...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Science, technology & innovation
Lead investigator: Kate Hunt
Countries
Covid-19: what are the drivers of the Islamophobic infodemic communications on social media
The research project will examine the interaction between miscommunications and conspiracy theories in relation to key factors such as anonymity, membership length and peer groups, within the context of the current Covid-19 pandemic on social media. ...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Imran Awan
Countries
The impact of Covid-19 restrictions on recreation and use of green space in Wales
The use of green spaces for recreation has acknowledged benefits for physical and mental health, to the extent of reducing mortality rates [1]. Green spaces include parks and gardens in urban areas, and the wider countryside in more rural settings. T...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Julia Jones
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
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
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
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
The effects of emergency government cash transfers on beliefs and behaviours during the Covid pandemic: evidence from Brazil
This project aims to evaluate the impact of emergency cash transfers on workers’ beliefs about the coronavirus. It focused on the impacts of ‘Auxilio Emergencial’, a cash grant provided to low-income households in response to income falls cause...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Fernanda Leite Lopez de Leon
Countries
Building resilience during the pandemic: evidence from a cash transfer program in Bolivia
Exploiting the context of a large-scale, untargeted, non- contributory pension program in bolivia, we study the short-term effects of cash transfers on household resilience during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. We compare households that became ...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Nicolas Bottan
Countries
Social comparisons and cooperation during Covid-19
We conducted a survey experiment during the Covid-19 pandemic to examine the effects of information treatments on individuals' cooperation with social distancing measures. Using a 2 x 2 factorial design, we examined the effects of messages that ...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Shuhei Kitamura
The impact of lockdowns on socio-economic attitudes
We examine the immediate impact of the nationwide lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic on the socio-economic attitudes of our societies. Before and after the enforcement of lockdowns, we conducted large-scale surveys with 20,000 individuals in four...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Kerim Peren Arin
