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.
Migration and the labor market impacts of Covid-19
Labor migration is a fundamental component of household income for a large number of households in many parts of the world, especially in poorer and more rural areas. Migrant households are hardest hit by Covid-19 mitigation policies as social distan...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Nathan Barker
Countries
Are palliative cash transfers effective to counteract the effects of stay-at-home orders? evidence from Peru
Several governments in LAC are increasingly imposing mandatory quarantines for all citizens to contain the expansion of the Covid-19 pandemic. These measures have proved to be the most effective to flatten the curve, but their downside are the econom...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Matthew Bird
Countries
Covid-19 and labour demand: evidence from Russia
The study is aimed to consider the impact of the Covid-19 on the labour market in Russia. In particular, we analyze the labour demand and its dynamics before and during the crisis, and estimate how the pandemic has changed the monetary value of the s...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Sofia Paklina
Countries
Entering the labour market during a pandemic: scarring effects and youth unemployment
This research aims to investigate the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic for labour market entrants, in particular the scarring effects on university graduates and the impact on youth unemployment. Macroeconomists have described the pandemic-drive...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Secondary Topic: Schools, universities & training
Lead investigator: Francesco Amodio
NSF-rapid: the Job Posting in Recession and Recovery (JPRR) project
The Job Posting in Recession and Recovery project will develop near real time indicators of labor demand for new workers by occupation, geographic area, and firms using job postings downloaded daily from company websites by a job search engine. The p...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Erling Barth
Countries
Job search during the Covid-19 crisis
This paper measures the job-search responses to the Covid-19 pandemic using real-time data on vacancy postings and ad views on Sweden's largest online job board. First, vacancy postings drop by 40%, similar to the US. Second, job seekers respond...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Lena Hensvik
Countries
Wage inequality and poverty effects of lockdown and social distancing in Europe
The “social distancing” measures taken to contain the spread of Covid-19 impose economic costs that go beyond the contraction of GDP. Since different occupations are not equally affected, this supply shock may have distributional implications. He...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Juan C. Palomino
Job search behaviour in the united states during the Covid-19 pandemic
This study examines the effect of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) on U.S. job search activity by developing sectoral and state-level job search indices. We document that Covid-19 has a significantly negative effect on job search, and that this eff...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Wei-Fong Pan
Countries
Gender equality in work and Covid-19 deaths
On average, women comprise a smaller share of deaths from Covid-19. Variation in the share of Covid-19 deaths for women across countries and US States suggests that biological factors cannot fully account for this gender difference. I hypothesize tha...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Renée Adams
Countries
The impact of shutdown policies on unemployment during a pandemic
We use high-frequency Google search data, combined with data on the announcement dates of nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) during the Covid-19 pandemic in U.S. states, to isolate the impact of NPIs on unemployment in an event-study framework. E...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Edward Kong
Countries
Disparate impacts of Covid-19 lockdowns in Pakistan affecting girls and rural
residents
In this article, we examine the feasibility of working and studying from home in Pakistan. We take advantage of the 2018–19 Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement (PSLM) Survey, released only weeks ago. PSLM is a nationally representative...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Syed Hasan
Countries
Impact of Covid–19 lockdown on the socio-economic condition of informal sector wage workers in India
Outbreak of COVID – 19 pandemic, and nationwide unprecedented lockdown has brought a grinding halt to economic activities, adversely affecting the life and livelihood of informal sector wage workers. They are struggling on two fronts of life: one i...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Archanca Srivastava
Countries
Covid-19 and disadvantage in New York City: a study using data from the Robin Hood and Columbia University poverty tracker and early childhood poverty tracker
Within two weeks, the Covid-19 pandemic drastically altered life in New York City, wreaking havoc on the personal and economic health of the City’s population. This study employs data from the Robin Hood and Columbia University Poverty Tracker and ...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Jane Waldfogel
Countries
The short-term effect of Covid-19 on employment and wages
In this ongoing project, we examine the short-term consequences of Covid-19 on employment and wages in the united states. Guided by a pre-analysis plan, we document the impact of Covid-19 at the national-level using a simple difference and test wheth...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Abel Brodeur
Countries
Agile working in times of Covid-19
In times of Covid-19 crisis, encouraging Agile Working (AW) is a key global action adopted by governments and companies to protect workers in the workplace and to maintain economic and education systems’ activities during the quarantine. Studies bu...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Massimo Miglioretti
Countries
When school closes, dad works and mum stays home?
What is the division of child care between mothers and fathers, and how does this division affect labor supply? The spread of Covid-19 has led to temporary closures of childcare facilities and schools in many countries. This is particularly challengi...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Omar Bamieh
Countries
Labor market policies during a pandemic
Many countries have introduced lockdowns to fight Covid-19, which has required the shuttering of many businesses and dramatically increased unemployment. We study the interaction of lockdowns and employment support programs in an epidemiological SEIR...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Secondary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: Andrew Glover
Countries
Youth empowerment in Bolivia
We evaluate a program that aims to help vulnerable youth aged 15-18 find a job, improve their working conditions and strengthen their income generation capacity. In order to achieve these goals, the program, which is implemented in four regions of Bo...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Selim Gulesci
Countries
Internet use and job market sentiment: an early assessment of Covid-19 pandemic shock across the EU
This research project investigates to what extent the widespread of internet access cushioned the job market sentiment during the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The empirical strategy applies a novel regional data set, constructed from the Google...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Secondary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Marcin Wolski
Heterogeneous vulnerability to the Covid-19 crisis in Japan
We study how the Covid-19 crisis could affect earnings inequality across heterogeneous individuals in Japan. We use the Employment Structure Basic Survey by Statistics Bureau of Japan to identify groups of workers who are more susceptible to the shoc...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Shinnosuke Kikuchi
Countries
