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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.

The role of inter-temporal biases in influencing individuals’ demand for social distancing

We examine the economic determinants for social distancing in the context of Covid-19. Previous economics studies document the important role behavioral biases could play in inter-temporal decision-making. Viewing health in an inter-temporal framewor...
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Plamen Nikolov
Countries

Political polarization, social fragmentation, and cooperation during a pandemic

We study the impact of political polarization on the willingness of people to comply with social distancing directives during the Covid-19 pandemic. We find a reduced compliance with these measures when the state governor differs from the preferred p...
Lead investigator: Boriana Miloucheva
Countries

How does household spending respond to an epidemic? consumption during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic

We explore how household consumption responds to epidemics, utilizing transaction-level household financial data to investigate the impact of the Covid-19 virus. As the number of cases grew, households began to radically alter their typical spending ...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Scott R. Baker
Countries

Income and wealth shocks and expectations during the Covid-19 pandemic

In early April 2020 we conducted a survey on a representative sample of more than 8,000 US households to study the effect of the coronavirus crisis on household income and retirement wealth, households' expectations about the recovery, and the i...
Primary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Secondary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: Tobin Hanspal
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

The impact of Covid-19 on the lives of women in the garment industry: evidence from Ethiopia

In this project, we conduct high-frequency phone surveys on a panel of women who work in garment factories in Ethiopia’s largest industrial park in the city of Hawassa to document how their lives are changing during the Covid-19 crisis. Sampling fr...
Primary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Secondary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: Morgan Hardy
Countries

Labour supply in the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic: empirical evidence on hours, home office, and expectations

Using a survey module administered in late March 2020, we analyze how working hours change under the social distancing regulations enacted to fight the Covid-19 pandemic. We study the Netherlands, which are a prototypical Western European country, bo...
Lead investigator: Hans-Martin von Gaudecker
Countries

Economic impacts of Covid-19 lockdowns on vulnerable populations: evidence from Jordan

This project examines the economic impact of Covid-19 lockdown policies in Jordan. It focuses on the distributional impacts across different segments of society: the rich and poor, formal and informal workers, occupations, industries, women and refug...
Primary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Secondary Topic: Transport & infrastructure
Lead investigator: Michael Gechter
Countries

Measuring risk and time preferences during the emergence of the Covid-19 crisis

We measure risk and time preferences, and examine the relationship with the disposition effect. Firstly, to estimate preferences, we use and compare several well-known quantitative and qualitative methods. Our main specification is an extended versio...
Lead investigator: Jorgo T.G. Goossens
Countries

A cross country analyses of sentiments and emotions, before and after Covid-19, using big data

The main aim of this project is to analyse and compare sentiment and emotions of people in three countries, before and after the introduction of regulations to limit the spread of the Covid-19 virus. The uniqueness in the choice of the countries lies...
Lead investigator: Talita Greyling

The short-term effect of quarantine requirement on domestic violence

Quarantines implemented worldwide following the spread of the coronavirus resulted in many people having to spend more time with their families and partners, which can potentially lead to an increase in intra-family violence. Our study seeks to asses...
Primary Topic: Crime & policing
Lead investigator: M. Amelia Gibbons
Countries

Our Covid story

Our Covid Story is a longitudinal study examining the impact of pandemic stress on health behaviors. Two cohorts of participants, from New York City and the broader United States, use a mobile app to complete approximately 5-10 minutes of self-report...
Lead investigator: Paul Glimcher
Countries

Consumer responses to the Covid-19 crisis: evidence from bank account transaction data

This paper uses transaction-level customer data from the largest bank in Denmark to estimate consumer responses to the Covid-19 pandemic and the partial shutdown of the economy. We find that aggregate card spending has dropped sharply by around 25% f...
Primary Topic: Recession & recovery
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Asger Lau Anderson
Countries

Covid-19-related school closures: impact on students in their final high school years

Students in their final high school years are faced with long lasting career decisions under high uncertainty and they are pressured to perform well in their high-stake exams. The government regulations following the Covid-19 pandemic such as school ...
Lead investigator: Malte Sandner
Countries

Labor market flows and the Covid-19 economy

I examine labor market flows in the CPS through March 2020. Although there was a dramatic single month increase in the unemployment rate and exit rate from employment, most cyclical flows (hiring, employer-to-employer flows, quits) have not yet chang...
Lead investigator: Eliza Forsythe
Countries

Pandemics meet democracy. experimental evidence from the Covid-19 crisis in Spain

The Covid-19 outbreak poses an unprecedented challenge for contemporary democracies. Despite the global scale of the problem, the response has been mainly national, and global coordination has been so far extremely weak. All over the world government...
Lead investigator: Francesc Amat
Countries

Belief change to market economy or planned economy? shock from Covid-19

Covid-19 has caused panic buying, temporary supply shortage and soaring prices. The Chinese government has formulated restrictive policies to guide the market order. We are curious whether the epidemic had an impact on the belief in the economic syst...
Lead investigator: Naixi Liu
Countries

Containing the virus or reviving the economy? evidence from individual expectations during the Covid-19 epidemic

How does an epidemic affect individuals' expectation on economic prospects? We implement an incentivized longitudinal online survey with randomized controlled trials during the Covid-19 epidemic in China to answer this question. We find that low...
Lead investigator: Keyang Li
Countries

Preferences and economic decision-making in the wake of Covid-19: experimental evidence from China

Using a large-scale experiment in China we study whether exposure to a major public health crisis affects the stability of economic preferences. We utilise a unique three-wave panel dataset of 539 students at Beijing Universities, collected in Octobe...
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Paul Lohmann
Countries

Social cost with no political gain: the “Chinese virus” effect

Naming a contagious disease, such as Covid-19, by the geographic locality where the disease originates or starts, for example, Wuhan or China, may stigmatize specific ethnic groups related to that locality, and such stigmatizing behavior will further...
Lead investigator: Yixin Liu
Countries