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.
Facilitating the public response to Covid-19 by harnessing group processes
There is international recognition that effective response to Covid-19 is dependent upon the public acting collectively and for the common good. This is important in terms of adherence to preventative measures, which, especially for low-risk groups, ...
Primary Topic: Charities & volunteering
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: John Drury
Countries
Necessary discussions: advance care planning for nursing homes in a Covid-19 outbreak
It is likely that nursing homes in the UK will become clusters in their communities for the worst clinical manifestations of Covid-19 (1). Since all nursing home residents are at substantial risk, nursing home care staff need to know what residents w...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Kevin Brazil
Countries
Covid-19: identifying effective remote literacy teaching methods for primary-aged children
This research project stems from a direct appeal from our UK teacher collaborators, who suddenly face having to teach pupils online, with scant training and patchy evidence on how to do so effectively. We aim to identify effective remote, evidence-ba...
Primary Topic: Schools, universities & training
Lead investigator: Manon Jones
Countries
Impact of Covid-19 on staff mental health and well-being in SMEs: strategies and interventions to support workforce and boost productivity in the UK
Covid-19 pandemic has led governments globally to respond with unprecedented lockdown and economic measures to combat spread of the disease, and support workers and businesses. The pandemic presents a real threat to small and medium sized enterprises...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Prasanta Kumar Dey
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
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
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
Moral suasion and the private provision of public goods: evidence from the Covid-19 pandemic
We study how moral suasion that appeals to two major ethical theories, Consequentialism and Deontology, affects individual intentions to contribute to a public good. We use the Covid-19 pandemic as an exemplary case where there is a large gap between...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Moritz A. Drupp
Countries
Lives or livelihoods? perceived trade-offs and public demand for non-pharmaceutical interventions
We study the role of cost-benefit considerations in driving public demand for nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) during the Covid-19 pandemic. In a large-scale online survey experiment with a representative sample of the US population, we introdu...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Sonja Settele
Countries
Community health care and Covid-19 pandemic: experimental evidence from Uganda
The limited capacity of the health systems in many low-income countries, especially in rural areas, suggests that the rapid spreading of the Covid-19 virus could have huge consequences in those areas. On top of the direct impact of the virus, a growi...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Martina Bjorkman-Nyqvist
Countries
Ethnic employment gap during the Covid-19 outbreak: great equalizer or divider?
Many employees lose their jobs as the result of Covid-19 outbreak (ILO, 19 March 2020). Moreover, the number of job openings decreases, making it harder for applicants to compete. This challenging situation can be particularly hard for minority group...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Igor Asanov
Countries
Does the Covid-19 pandemic increase or decrease pro-sociality and does it shift donations towards more local causes?
Locally occurring natural catastrophes typically seem to increase international solidarity (Scharf, Smith, and Ottoni-Wilhelm 2017). The global spread of the Covid-19 is unprecedented such that it is not clear what types of behavioral responses it is...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Maja Adena
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
Prosocial behavior in the time of Covid-19: the effect of private and public role models
In public good provision and other collective action problems, people are uncertain about how to balance self-interest and prosociality. Actions of others may inform this decision. We conduct an experiment to test the effect of private and public rol...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Martin Abel
Countries
Social distancing and pro-sociality in times of acute sanitary crisis
The health crisis generated by the Covid-19 disease, which is rapidly spreading worldwide through direct human contact, has called for strict measures to limit contagion that drastically reduce social interactions. We study whether the imposed confin...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Fortuna Casoria
Countries
The causal influence of information about Covid-19 on laypersons trust in government, perception of their living conditions, and economic expectations
The current Covid-19 crisis has profound effects around the world. A potentially important factor for the perception of the crisis by laypersons appears to be the specific type of information they receive. Focusing on two emerging markets, Thailand a...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Bernd Hayo
The impact of cash in a crisis: evidence from Dandora, Kenya during and after Covid-19
This study will deliver cash grants to microenterprise owners run by women in Dandora, Kenya during the Covid-19 outbreak. We will use a randomized controlled trial to study the impact of cash on economic outcomes both during and after the crisis. Al...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: Wyatt Brooks
Countries
Risk and time preferences under the lockdown
There exist increasing evidence that human preferences—including risk and time attitudes—change across contexts (Bowles, 1998; Barseghyan et al., 2011; Wolbert and Riedl, 2013; Wang et al., 2016). Since measuring preferences consistently over tim...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Pablo Branas-Garza
Countries
Evolution of atemporal and intertemporal risk preferences, time preferences, and subjective beliefs about prevalence and mortality of Covid-19 during the course of the global crisis: an incentivised experiment with American and South African samples
Policies adopted by most countries in 2020 for suppressing transmission of the novel coronavirus and of illness and mortality due to Covid-19 depend on compliance with mandated drastic and costly risk control measures by the general public. While res...
Lead investigator: Glenn W. Harrison
Countries
Volatility shocks and investment behavior
We investigate how volatility shocks influence investments into a risky asset, perceptions about the asset’s risk, its future price/return development, and investor satisfaction. We run investment experiments mimicking volatility shocks with two su...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Christoph Huber
Countries
