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Current Research

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Economists 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.

Food system impacts of Covid-19

This research will examine the extent of continuity and dislocation in the supply chain across dairy products, meat, fresh fruit and vegetables, and fish. They will look at instances of radical changes in routes to markets and the barriers to change;...
Primary Topic: Trade & supply chains
Secondary Topic: Business, big & small
Lead investigator: D. Michael Winter
Countries

Supporting fiscal policy decisions in the crisis

We are going through an economic crisis. The government has responded with an unprecedented policy package, costing many tens of billions of pounds over just a few months – paying for employees to be furloughed, making payments to the self-employed...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: Paul Johnson
Countries

The effects of social distancing policies on children’s language development, sleep and executive functions.

The environments children grow up in heavily influence key elements of cognitive development such as language and executive functions, which in turn associate with later educational and occupational attainment as well as health and wellbeing (1–8)....
Lead investigator: Nayeli Gonzalez-Gomez
Countries

Covid-19: burden and impact in care homes – a mixed methods study

The Covid-19 pandemic poses a substantial risk to elderly and vulnerable care home residents and Covid-19 can spread rapidly in care homes. We have national, daily data on people with Covid-19 and deaths, but there is no similar data for care homes. ...
Secondary Topic: Charities & volunteering
Lead investigator: Laura Shallcross
Countries

English longitudinal study of ageing Covid-19 substudy

The Covid-19 crisis is having an unprecedented impact on people's lives from the perspectives of their health, psychological wellbeing, social activity, employment and financial circumstances. Older people are at high risk because of the presenc...
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Andrew Steptoe
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...
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Itai Ater
Countries

Welfare at a (social) distance: accessing social security and employment support during the Covid-19 crisis and its aftermath

The benefits system is crucial to supporting people during, and after, the Covid-19 crisis but is under extraordinary pressure from an unprecedented wave of new Universal Credit (UC) applications. The benefits system therefore faces two significant c...
Secondary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Lisa Scullion
Countries

The impact of the Covid-19 crisis on nutrition

A major challenge facing policymaking during the Covid-19 crisis is ensuring all households have access to a nutritious diet. The Department of Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) have provided supermarkets with a list of 1.5 million vulner...
Primary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Martin O'Connell
Countries

Where does work belong anymore? The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on working in the UK

The Covid-19 outbreak has forced companies to embrace home-based working (HBW) at such speed that they have had little opportunity to consider the impact on their workers. It can be argued that the crisis has led to the most significant, intensive so...
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Abigail Marks
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...
Lead investigator: Armenak Antinyan
Countries

The Covid-19 pandemic and working parents: evidence from Brisith longitudinal data

We document the difficulties faced by working parents during the Covid-19 pandemic, and in particular the increased financial insecurity and worsening mental health due to conflicting family and work needs. We analyse the heterogeneous effects of the...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Zhiming Cheng
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...
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Sofia Amaral
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 ...
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Nicolas Bottan
Countries

Impacts of Covid-19 on rural households in Bangladesh

The Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI) is conducting a survey of rural households in Bangladesh to better understand Covid-19’s impacts on vulnerable people and guide the development of policy responses that improve social protection. This pho...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Peter Morgan
Countries

Corona, lockdown, local GDP and Individual well-being: a comparison of regions in New Zealand with machine learning forecasts

We study the impact of local economic prospects on the well-being of individuals in reaction to the Corona lockdown and thereafter. We expect that well-being is positively affected by the economic outlook in the local region, as approximated via AI-b...
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Nora Szech
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 ...
Lead investigator: Shuhei Kitamura

The unequal effects of Covid-19 on economists' research productivity

The current lock-down measures are expected to disproportionately reduce women’s labor productivity in the short run. This paper analyzes the effects of these measures on economists' research productivity. We explore the patterns of working pa...
Primary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Noriko Amano-Patino

Using phone surveys to assess the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the delivery of health and nutrition services in rural Ethiopia

This study assesses the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the delivery of health and nutrition services in rural Ethiopia using a phone survey. This three-wave survey will illuminate disruptions to healthcare delivery and adoption of precautionary ...
Secondary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Guush Berhane
Countries

Habit formation from corona lockdown

To prevent the spread of Covid-19, many countries have implemented different degrees of lockdowns, which has profoundly changed the way people live their lives. In our study, we investigate how habits change during and after the Corona lockdowns. We ...
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Nora Szech

Social response to early-stage government control measures of Covid-19 in Colombia: population survey, April 8-20 2020

On Monday, March 16, 2020, the government of Colombia announced actions to control Covid-19. These recommendations directly affected the entire population and included: reducing physical contact; reducing mobility and cancelling unnecessary travel; w...
Countries