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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
My home is my castle – the benefits of working from home during a pandemic crisis: evidence from Germany
This paper studies the relation between work and public health during the Covid-19 pandemic in Germany. Combining administrative data on SARS-CoV-2 infections and short-time work registrations, firm- and worker-level surveys and cell phone tracking d...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Jean-Victor Alipour
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...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Nora Szech
Countries
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 ...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Guush Berhane
Countries
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
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
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 ...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
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...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Juan Carlos Rivillas-García
Countries
Conflict in Africa during Covid-19: social distancing, food vulnerability and welfare response
We study the effect of social distancing, food vulnerability, welfare and labour Covid-19 policy responses on riots, violence against civilians and food-related conflicts. Our analysis uses georeferenced data for 24 African countries with monthly loc...
Primary Topic: Crime & policing
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Roxana Gutiérrez-Romero
Assessing inequality in the school closure response to Covid-19
The spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) has caused school closures in more than 190 countries, affecting over 90% of the world’s student population. School closures can widen learning inequalities and disproportionately hurt vulnerable st...
Primary Topic: Schools, universities & training
Lead investigator: Xiqian Cai
Countries
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
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
Covid-19: industry level origins of changes in economic welfare
We provide an analysis of how the decline in aggregate UK economic welfare caused by Covid-19 is related to industry-level measures of economic activity. By exploiting data on asset prices, we perform our analysis in real time. We find significant as...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Harjoat S. Bhamra
Countries
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
Trust in the healthcare system and Covid-19 treatment in the developing world – survey and experimental evidence from Armenia.
Covid-19 continues to spread across the globe at an exponential speed, infecting millions and overwhelming even the most prepared healthcare systems. Concerns are looming that the healthcare systems in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are mos...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Armenak Antinyan
Countries
