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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.

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...
Secondary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: Marta Gómez-Puig

Covid-19 and educational inequality – evidence from Germany

In spring 2020, governments around the globe shut down schools to mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus. We conduct a large-scale survey in Germany to study parent-child time use during the educational shutdown. Focusing on differences across ...
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Elisabeth Grewenig
Countries

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 ...
Lead investigator: Natalia Montinari
Countries

Covid-19 information and demand for protective gear in the UK

Amid the Covid-19 crisis in the UK, we study the demand and willingness to pay for hand sanitiser gel, disposable face masks and disposable gloves, and the role of information on tested people and Covid-19 deaths in explaining the demand and willingn...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Sonia Oreffice
Countries

Ownership and business resilience during a pandemic

Exploring how financial markets fare during the Covid-19 crisis, scholars have begun to probe into organizational factors at the firm level in order to understand the different response by companies. Our key goal is to test whether the involvement of...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Lead investigator: Mario Daniele Amore
Countries

The effects of working from home on Covid-19 infections and production – a macroeconomic analysis for Germany

We study the impact of confinement on infection risk and on the German economy. We first document that regions whose industry structure allows for a large fraction of work to be done at home also experienced much fewer Covid-19 cases and fatalities. ...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Secondary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Harald Fadinger
Countries

The effects of covid on women: work, housework and financial decisions

The outbreak of Covid-19 has affected lives of hundreds of thousands of men and women throughout the world. In Italy, the impact has been more severe than in the rest of Europe. Women are severely hit by the choc, both on their jobs and in their fami...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Daniela Del Boca
Countries

The short and long run impact of the “great lockdown”: lessons from Italy

This project aims to assess the impact of school and economic lockdowns on short-run outcomes (the spread of the Covid-19 pandemics) and on medium and long-run ones (effect on economic outcomes and school performance) by exploiting heterogeneity in t...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Nicola Borri
Countries

Debt sharing after Covid-19: how the direct involvement of EU institutions impacts the recovery path of a member state.

The substantial risk to public health posed by the emergence of Covid-19 has resulted in many European Governments taking unprecedented action to arrest the spread of the virus. Administrative closures across a number of economies has resulted in a c...
Primary Topic: Recession & recovery
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Kieran McQuinn
Countries

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 ...
Secondary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: Rodolfo M. Nayga
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...
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...
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Omar Bamieh
Countries

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...
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Beat Hintermann
Countries

Lost in lockdown? the effect of social distancing and quarantine policies on depression and suicide in Germany

We exploit spatial and temporal variation in mitigation policies to assess how social-distancing and quarantine policies imposed in response to the Covid-19 pandemic in Germany affect anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. Our empirical approach...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Valentin Klotzbucher
Countries

Safe matching and labor reallocation

The recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic will involve a major reallocation of labour across jobs. A large number of jobs involving personal contacts with customers or colleagues are likely to be shut down for a long period of time unless they can be d...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Secondary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Gaetano Basso
Countries

How contagious is a pandemic to the housing market? evidence from day-by-day sales and minute-by-minute bids after a Covid-19 policy intervention

We exploit day-by-day transaction and minute-by-minute auction data from Norway in order to estimate the effect on the housing market of the government intervention on 12 March 2020 and further effects from economic relief packages announced on 20 Ma...
Primary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Andre K. Anundsen
Countries

The welfare effect on households of social isolation

This project studies the welfare effects of social isolation due to the Covid-19 outbreak. In particular, we are interested in measuring the potential negative welfare effects on household of having to be in quarantine with limited possibilities to b...
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Ola Andersson
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...
Lead investigator: Marcin Wolski