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.
Maximizing effectiveness of policy-based responses to Covid-19: mapping citizens’ preferences over multi-dimensional trade-offs
At the onset of large-scale health crises such as the recent Covid-19 pandemic, the unavailability of reliable medicine-based responses implies that the role of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) and public health policies are essential in conta...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Shaun Hargreaves Heap
Bowling together by bowling alone: social capital and Covid-19
The literature documents a strong positive association between social capital and health. However, because personal social interactions are implicated in the spread of viral infections, areas with high levels of social capital may be especially at ri...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Francesca Borgonovi
Countries
Global evidence on the determinants of public trust in governments during the Covid-19
Using the Worldwide Covid-19 Attitudes and Beliefs dataset covering 108,918 respondents from 178 countries, the paper examines the determinants of public trust in governments during the Covid-19. It is found that older and healthy people trust more t...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Nations, regions & cities
Lead investigator: Giray Gozgor
The effect of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) pandemic on risk and time preferences
We elicit incentivized measures of risk and time preferences in a sample of undergraduate students in Athens, Greece. While the original purpose of the study was to elicit a battery of psychological, behavioral and economic measures and traits that c...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Andreas C. Drichoutis
Countries
Belief in science influences physical distancing in response to Covid-19 lockdown policies
Physical distancing reduces transmission risks and slows the spread of Covid-19. Local and regional governments in the United States have issued shelter-in-place policies to mandate physical distancing. Yet compliance with these policies is uneven an...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Science, technology & innovation
Lead investigator: David Van Dijcke
Countries
Pro-sociality predicts health behaviors during the Covid-19 pandemic
Socially responsible behavior is crucial for slowing the spread of infectious diseases. However, economic and epidemiological models of disease transmission abstract from prosocial motivations as a driver of behaviors that impact the health of others...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Pol Campos-Mercade
Countries
Accepting the mask, accepting the mosque? the effects of Covid-19 related face covering on prejudice towards religious veiling.
Using a large scale lab-in-the-field experimental setting, we study how the mitigation efforts for Covid-19 in the form of covering the face through masks affect the behavior and perception of subjects towards others. In particular, we study whether ...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Samreen Malik
Countries
Covid-19-induced economic sentiments spreads: evidence from the European union
According to the European Commission, In April 2020, the Economic Sentiment Indicator (ESI) crashed in both the euro area (?27.2 points down to 67.0) and the European Union (EU)(?28.8 down to 65.8 points). This was the strongest monthly decline in th...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: Marta Gómez-Puig
Identity in multicultural society
The project experimentally investigates the role of identity in shaping preferences and attitudes. A multidimensional definition of identity informs the work, with specific attention to differences between natives and immigrants. At this aim, we run ...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Natalia Montinari
Countries
Willingness to pay for morbidity and mortality risk reductions during an epidemic. Theory and preliminary evidence from the Covid-19 epidemic
As a result of the ongoing coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, individuals and governments around the world are undertaking very costly actions to prevent the rapid spread of the disease and potentially millions of deaths (e.g. social distancing interve...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Luciana Echazu
Countries
The effect of social distancing on risk aversion, trust, and solidarity
The experiment investigates the causal effect of social distancing on behavioral traits that are important in interpersonal relationships. We exploit the different timing of stay-at-home orders issued during the Covid-19 outbreak as a natural experim...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Antonio Filippin
Countries
Robo-advisor adoption, willingness to pay, and trust—an experimental investigation pre and during Covid-19
We compare readiness to adopt and willingness to pay for (as a proxy for trust) financial advice provided three ways (algorithm, human, and a hybrid of algorithm and human) using an online and a computerized laboratory experiment. Our experiments wer...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Daniel Ben David
Countries
Coronavirus pandemic shock, economic preferences and beliefs: an online survey experiment
Preferences and beliefs (such as risk preferences), for individuals who experience dramatic natural disasters (such as a major hurricane), are unstable. The diversity and breadth of the Covid-19 pandemic provide a unique, although grime, opportunity ...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Raymond Duch
Measuring worldwide Covid-19 attitudes and beliefs
We use a large-scale survey covering 58 countries and over 100,000 responses to study beliefs and attitudes towards citizens' and governments' responses to the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020. Data collection is ongoing and we hope to maint...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Dr. Christopher Roth
Do stock markets play a role in determining the Covid-19 economic stimulus? A cross-country analysis
This paper makes an innovative contribution to the literature by analyzing the determinants of the Covid-19 economic stimulus. In particular, we explore whether the stock market fall observed due to the coronavirus pandemic in many countries around t...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: Sajid M. Chaudhry
Food purchase behavior during Covid-19 pandemic
Covid-19 pandemic is increasingly a historical challenge that the world is called upon to face without prior preparation. In addition to an inevitable economic crisis due to the shutdown of many economic activities, the pandemic is causing important ...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: Rodolfo M. Nayga
Countries
Determinants of the community mobility during the Covid-19 epidemic: the role of government regulations and information
As countries around the world are adopting drastic social distancing measures to slow down the spread of the novel coronavirus (Covid-19), the question of an optimal balance between the benefits and costs of these policies has received a lot of atten...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Silvia Mendolia
Attitudes, behaviours and sources of information among social media users towards Covid-19: a cross-cultural explanatory study
Researchers, policymakers and societies alike are increasingly discussing the New Coronavirus situation. The European Commission, national governments and private foundations are investing large amounts of money for research, focusing on finding the ...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Yash Chawla
Effect of Covid-19 and the enacted policy measures on individual travel behavior
Between August 2019 and January 2020, we carried out a large-scale tracking study involving 3,000 people in Switzerland. Participants were tracked using the GPS –based travel diary app “Catch my Day” for a total of 8 weeks based on a rolling re...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Beat Hintermann
Countries
Showing life opportunities: Covid-19 rapid response survey
More than 1.5 billion students have to stay at home due to Covid-19 school closures, more than 90% of total enrolled learners (UNESCO, 04.01.2020). To ensure learning continuity, students have to study at home. However, it is unclear how the students...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Igor Asanov
Countries
