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.
Necessary discussions: advance care planning for nursing homes in a Covid-19 outbreak
It is likely that nursing homes in the UK will become clusters in their communities for the worst clinical manifestations of Covid-19 (1). Since all nursing home residents are at substantial risk, nursing home care staff need to know what residents w...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Kevin Brazil
Countries
Assessing financial vulnerability and risk in the UK's charities during and beyond the Covid-19 crisis
This research will provide an analysis of the variegated impacts on charities of the very severe financial constraints they will experience due to the immediate and longer-term economic effects of the Covid-19 crisis. Building on our extensive prior ...
Primary Topic: Charities & volunteering
Lead investigator: John Mohan
Countries
Covid-19: Families, children aged 0-4 and pregnant women: vulnerabilities, resources and recovery in Tower Hamlets
Adverse impacts of the current Covid-19 pandemic will disproportionately fall on individuals and families at the lower end of the income distribution. The highly diverse population profile offers an opportunity to identify how families deploy their i...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Claire Cameron
Countries
Tracking the Covid-19 crisis with high-resolution transaction data
Financial and payments systems throughout the world generate a vast amount of naturally occurring, and digitally recorded, transaction data, but national statistical agencies mainly rely on surveys of much smaller scale for constructing official econ...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Vasco M. Carvalho
Countries
Conflict in Africa during Covid-19: social distancing, food vulnerability and welfare response
We study the effect of social distancing, food vulnerability, welfare and labour Covid-19 policy responses on riots, violence against civilians and food-related conflicts. Our analysis uses georeferenced data for 24 African countries with monthly loc...
Primary Topic: Crime & policing
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Roxana Gutiérrez-Romero
Risk perception and oil and gas markets under pandemic: evidence from Covid-19
The novel coronavirus (Covid-19) exposed individuals and investors to a great uncertainty about its short- and long-term health and economic ramifications, especially in the early days and weeks of the outbreak. This study documents oil and gasoline ...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Behzod B. Ahundjanov
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
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
Covid-19 shocking global value chains
The Covid-19 epidemic hit China in December 2019. Even before it turned into a pandemic, Covid-19 has strongly affected the world economy through global value chains. We use a quantitative trade model with input-output linkages to gauge the effects o...
Primary Topic: Trade & supply chains
Secondary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: Peter Eppinger
Countries
Mitigation of risks of Covid-19 contagion and robotisation: evidence from Italy
The rapid and dramatic diffusion of the Covid-19 epidemic in Italy was tackled by the Italian government with social distancing measures and with the suspension of all economic activities, but ``essential'' sectors. A lively policy debate o...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Mauro Caselli
Countries
Demand for public events in the Covid-19 pandemic: a case study of European football
This study uses data from elite-level European football matches and panel data methods to suggest how people responded to the initial Covid-19 outbreak. In Italy, England and Germany, stadium attendances were negatively affected by the previous day&#...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: J. James Reade
Does Covid-19 affect neighborhood amenity?
This paper studies the impact of Covid-19 on neighborhood amenity by analyzing the effect of confirmed Covid-19 cases on housing prices in China. Home buyers may not choose housing units in neighborhoods that have confirmed Covid-19 cases because of ...
Primary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Naqun Huang
Countries
The impact of Covid-19 lockdown and re-opening on the housing market: evidence from China
This paper evaluates the performance of the housing market in China after the Covid-19 outbreak and subsequent economy re-opening. We construct both daily and weekly housing price indices for more than 30 cities by analyzing 600 thousand housing tran...
Primary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Naqun Huang
Countries
Seller reputation and price gouging: evidence from the Covid-19 pandemic
We test the theory that seller reputation moderates the effect of demand shocks on a seller's propensity to price gouge. From mid January to mid March 2020, 3M masks were priced 2.72 times higher than Amazon sold them in 2019. However, the diffe...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Lead investigator: Luis Cabral
Coronavirus disease 2019 and the global economy
Using daily data on the global coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) deaths, this paper investigates the corresponding effects on the global economic activity measured by the Baltic Exchange Dry Index (BDI). The empirical results based on a structural ...
Primary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: Hakan Yilmazkuday
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
Covid-19 and financial markets: a panel analysis for European countries
In order to fight the economic consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, monetary and fiscal policy announced a large variety of support packages which are often unprecedented in size. In this paper, we provide an empirical analysis of the responses of ...
Primary Topic: Public spending, taxes & debt
Secondary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: Jens Klose
Improving bureaucratic effectiveness during the Covid-19 crisis
We study whether positive and negative reinforcement messages to supervisors can help improve bureaucratic outcomes in times of crisis. In many parts of the developing world, it is difficult to get bureaucrats to complete tasks. Focusing on school pr...
Primary Topic: Schools, universities & training
Secondary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Lead investigator: Catherine Rodríguez
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
Online auction markets in the aftermath of Covid-19
An economically relevant implication of cities lockdowns, perhaps the most popular government policy enacted to limit Covid-19 virus contagion, is putting a stop to retail markets and parallelly boost online ones. In this paper we leverage rich data ...
Primary Topic: Business, big & small
Secondary Topic: Prices & interest rates
Lead investigator: Francisco Alvarez-Gonzalez
