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.
Gendering the UK's social policy response to the Covid-19 crisis
The Covid-19 outbreak and resultant economic crisis has led to governments around the world, including the UK, taking extraordinary action to support citizens facing unprecedented shocks to their livelihoods. Bodies such as the International Labour O...
Primary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Rose Cook
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
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
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
Economic policy responses to a pandemic: developing the Covid-19 economic stimulus index
In this project, we conduct a comprehensive review of different economic policy measures adopted by 166 countries as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic and create a large database including fiscal, monetary, and exchange rate measures. Furthermore, ...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Ceyhun Elgin
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
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
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
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
Mitigation of risks of Covid-19 contagion and robotisation: evidence from Italy
The rapid and dramatic diffusion of the Covid-19 epidemic in Italy was tackled by the Italian government with social distancing measures and with the suspension of all economic activities, but ``essential'' sectors. A lively policy debate o...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Mauro Caselli
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
In crisis we pray: religiosity and the Covid-19 pandemic
In times of crisis, humans have a tendency to turn to religion for comfort and explanation. The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic is no exception. Daily data on Google searches for 95 countries demonstrates that the Covid-19 crisis has increased Google searches...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Jeanet Sinding Bentzen
Emotional states and the Covid-19 pandemic: evolution, national differences, and their relationship with emergency policies
We propose to study the effect of Covid-19 on the emotional states of people in OECD and other countries by applying content analysis to internet searches recorded via Google Trends since 31 December 2019. Our aim is to understand how emotional state...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Zhiming Cheng
First to reach is last to forgive: evidence from the stock market impact of Covid-19
During December of 2019, the world became aware of a new global-scale threat called at first as Coronavirus, which changed the lives of millions of people around the globe. The coronavirus had multiple impacts regarding public policies, economic prod...
Primary Topic: Recession & recovery
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Sherif M. Hassan
Locked-down in a welfare state: visible costs and hidden gains
I exploit the variation related to lock-down measures put in place in Italy (March 9, 2020) and Norway (March 12, 2020), to estimate the aggregate net costs for the government budget from unemployment insurance (defined as the most important building...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Roberto Iacono
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
Macroeconomic effects and spillovers among countries of the Covid-19 pandemic
Since December 2019, the Covid-19 pandemic spread worldwide from China, passing to Europe in February 2020, and lastly in the US, in March 2020. According to the Air Transport Association, in February 2020 the global growth rate of air passengers dem...
Primary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: Francesco Simone Lucid
