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.
Resilience of the UK seafood system to the Covid-19 disruption (RiseUp)
The UK seafood industry is under unprecedented pressure to deliver on national food security during Covid-19/SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, while trying to adapt to remain socio-economically viable. However, no data exists on the systemic impacts to the UK sea...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Secondary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: Sofia C. Franco
Countries
Understanding and explaining management practices to promote higher productivity in UK businesses
Extending ONS-Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE), Management and Expectations Survey (MES) of ~25,000 businesses with 10+ employees drawn from and linked to the 2016 Annual Business Survey sample.
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Secondary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Rebecca Riley
Countries
Measuring the impact of Brexit/Covid-19 on UK investment, sales and productivity
Researching impact of Covid-19 via ongoing decision maker panel on sales, employment, capital and requirements/availability of credit, working patterns, non-labour inputs, business expectations.
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Secondary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Paul Mizen
Countries
Covid-19: measuring the effects of Covid-19 on businesses and the UK economy
This application addresses two of the key objectives of this grant scheme by a) gathering critical data on the business response to Covid-19 quickly for immediate policy and future research use, b) providing new research with a clear impact pathway t...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Lead investigator: Paul Mizen
Countries
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
Waste management during the Covid-19 outbreak: investigating a critical sector in crisis
The Covid-19 outbreak is transforming everyday household waste into a biohazard. Coronaviruses are transmitted person-to-person, however Covid-19 also persists on surfaces for several days (van Doremalen et al. 2020). Consequently, this pandemic is s...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Secondary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Angeliki Balayannis
Countries
Real-time evaluation of the effects of Covid-19 and policy responses on consumer and small business finances
The project involves the creation of a new real-time economic characterisation of consumer and firm behaviour from mass transaction data. Specifically, the work will evaluate impact on consumer finances (reduced incomes, non-payment of debts, pattern...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Lead investigator: Neil Stewart
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
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
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
The Covid-19 bailouts
US policy makers responded to the Covid-19 epidemic by providing $1.8 trillion in private sector bailouts. We collect data on all bailouts for publicly-listed firms, document empirical facts of the bailout programs and discuss policy implications. Mo...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Lead investigator: Jean-Marie Meier
Countries
Seller reputation and price gouging: evidence from the Covid-19 pandemic
We test the theory that seller reputation moderates the effect of demand shocks on a seller's propensity to price gouge. From mid January to mid March 2020, 3M masks were priced 2.72 times higher than Amazon sold them in 2019. However, the diffe...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Lead investigator: Luis Cabral
Covid-19, firm exposure, and firm value: a tale of two lockdowns
We study how a public health crisis affects firms at different phases of outbreak. Using an event study approach, we find that the stock market in China responded significantly to two symbolic events in the outbreak of Covid-19: (1) the lockdown of H...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Lead investigator: Haoyuan Ding
Countries
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
Banks as bridges? firm funding during the Covid-19 cash crunch
We conduct face-to-face interviews with the Heads of Credit of over 400 banks in 35 countries in Emerging Europe, Asia and the Middle East to collect data on these banks’ Covid-19 policies. We cover whether banks temporarily deferred payments by ex...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Lead investigator: Cagatay Bircan
What are the effects of the Covid-19 crisis on labor demand? an analysis using job board data from Austria
In this project, we examine to what extent labor demand, measured in terms of vacancy postings, has changed during the crisis. Using data on various job characteristics, we analyze what type of jobs are most affected. These characteristics include oc...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Secondary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Omar Bamieh
Countries
Covid-19 and small firms: expectations, relief take-up and firm dynamics
Many small businesses have already been deeply affected by the Covid-19 crisis, leading them to lay off employees, temporarily close shop, or go out of business completely. In response, governments have passed specific provisions to help support smal...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Lead investigator: John Eric Humphries
Countries
The global impact of Covid-19 on fintech adoption
We draw on mobile application data from 74 countries to document the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the adoption of digital finance and fintech. We estimate that the spread of Covid-19 and related government lockdowns have led to between a 22 an...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Lead investigator: Jonathan Fu
Analysis of websites regarding firms’ reactions to corona pandemic in Germany
We analyze websites of about 1.3 Mio. firms in Germany twice a week searching for the term Corona and synonyms of it. Since our first collection of data on March 19th, 2020, the share of firms mentioning the pandemic raised by two percentage points w...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Lead investigator: Peter Winker
Countries
