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.
The economic effects of Covid-19 and credit constraints: evidence from Italian firms' expectations and plans
We investigate the economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and the role played by credit constraints in the transmission mechanism, using a novel survey of expectations and plans of Italian firms, taken just before and after the outbreak. Most firm...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: Pierluigi Balduzzi
Countries
Civic capital and social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic
The success of non-pharmaceutical interventions to contain pandemics often depends greatly upon voluntary compliance with government guidelines. What explains variation in voluntary compliance? Using mobile phone and survey data, we show that during ...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: John M Barrios
Lives or livelihoods? perceived trade-offs and public demand for non-pharmaceutical interventions
We study the role of cost-benefit considerations in driving public demand for nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) during the Covid-19 pandemic. In a large-scale online survey experiment with a representative sample of the US population, we introdu...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Sonja Settele
Countries
Covid-19 and the demand for flexible annuities
The demand for voluntary lifetime annuities is low. Two potential driving mechanisms behind this phenomenon are uninsurable risk early in life and financial illiteracy. Covid-19 generates a large amount of uncertainty for workers. We measure preferen...
Primary Topic: Pensions, savings & investment
Lead investigator: Pim Koopmans
Countries
Community health care and Covid-19 pandemic: experimental evidence from Uganda
The limited capacity of the health systems in many low-income countries, especially in rural areas, suggests that the rapid spreading of the Covid-19 virus could have huge consequences in those areas. On top of the direct impact of the virus, a growi...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Martina Bjorkman-Nyqvist
Countries
Does the Covid-19 pandemic increase or decrease pro-sociality and does it shift donations towards more local causes?
Locally occurring natural catastrophes typically seem to increase international solidarity (Scharf, Smith, and Ottoni-Wilhelm 2017). The global spread of the Covid-19 is unprecedented such that it is not clear what types of behavioral responses it is...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Maja Adena
Countries
Improving task completion by school principals during the Covid-19 crisis
We study whether neutral, positive, or negative reinforcement messages given to schools’ principals can improve their bureaucratic efficiency in times of crisis. Under the Covid-19 health emergency urgency, the Ministry of Education asked all schoo...
Primary Topic: Schools, universities & training
Secondary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Daniel Morales
Countries
Ethnic employment gap during the Covid-19 outbreak: great equalizer or divider?
Many employees lose their jobs as the result of Covid-19 outbreak (ILO, 19 March 2020). Moreover, the number of job openings decreases, making it harder for applicants to compete. This challenging situation can be particularly hard for minority group...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Igor Asanov
Countries
Income effect in private contribution of public goods: economic impact payment in the Covid-19 pandemic
This paper studies the public good nature of Covid-19 mitigation effort, and illustrates the relationship between income level and the voluntary contribution to the Covid-19 mitigation effort. I build a theoretical model to show that there exists a t...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Ruohao Zhang
Countries
Promoting social distancing in a pandemic: beyond the good intentions
Reminders to promote social distancing have been ubiquitous throughout the Covid-19 crisis, but little is known about their effectiveness. Existing studies find positive impacts on intentions to comply, but no evidence exists of actual behavioural ch...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Paolo Falco
Countries
The impact of Covid-19 on work and time-use in the family
This project analyses the impact of the severe contention measures and stay-home orders resulting from the Covid-19 outbreak on the work and time-use of families in Spain. Between March 14 and May 2, 2020, the country suffered the strictest lockdown ...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Lídia Farré
Countries
Working from home: occupations and performance, results from Hungary
In the world of strict measures against the pandemic including stay-at-home orders and lockdowns working from home is part of the solutions to keep the economy running. In this paper we construct a simple measure of working from home potential using ...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Bence Kiss-Dobronyi
Countries
Privacy under pandemics: Do we really want to be tracked?
During the current Covid-19 situation, health authorities across the globe are gathering and using personal data to efficiently track and fight the spreading of the disease. Citizen are asked to trade privacy against better health or against a faster...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Ole Christian Wasenden
The effects of Covid-19 crisis on Japanese households: a study using the data from the special survey of Japan Household Panel Survey(JHPS)
Using the data from the special survey of the Japan Household Panel Survey (JHPS), this study aims to clarify the effects of Covid-19 crisis on households, labour market outcome, health and wellbeing, and how those changes affect inequality in Japan....
Primary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Secondary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Isamu Yamamato
Countries
Covid-19 lockdown, institutional responsiveness, and household well-being: evidence from India
The countrywide lockdown has been the dominant strategy of the Indian government to arrest the rise of the Covid-19 pandemic. While the state and central governments should be focusing on formulating broad policies, the local government (Panchayats) ...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Vivek Pandey
Countries
Stereotypes and political attitudes in the age of coronavirus: empirical evidence from Italy
The novel coronavirus has led to increasing concerns about racial discrimination and anti-EU sentiment in various European countries. We use a newly-developed bot that works through Facebook Messenger to conduct a longitudinal online survey in Italy ...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Dante Donati
Countries
Children’s education and use of time during the Covid-19 lockdown in France and Italy
The Covid-19 crisis has large impacts on the economy and these impacts are probably highly unequal among individuals and families. From a family perspective the lockdown situation is having a tremendous impact on two fundamental assets of families we...
Primary Topic: Schools, universities & training
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Hugues Champeaux
The impact of lockdown on the division of housework and childcare in French households
Before the Covid-19 outbreak, the burden of unpaid work in Europe, e.g. housework and childcare, was mostly carried-out by women - with women spending around 22 hours per week and men only 9 hours per week in unpaid work (European Commission 2019). W...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Anne Boring
Countries
Prosocial behavior in the time of Covid-19: the effect of private and public role models
In public good provision and other collective action problems, people are uncertain about how to balance self-interest and prosociality. Actions of others may inform this decision. We conduct an experiment to test the effect of private and public rol...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Martin Abel
Countries
Coronavirus and climate change – individual spillover in private public good provision
The need for private climate protection measures to achieve the 1.5-degree target of the Paris Agreements is not in question. But how does this insight change in the light of another global crisis, the corona pandemic? People are scared by infectious...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Elke D. Groh
Countries
