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Medicaid and Fiscal Federalism During the COVID-19 Pandemic
From the Abstract: "We analyze the effects of the COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] pandemic on state and local government finances, with an emphasis on health spending needs and the role of the Medicaid program. We arrive at three conclusions. First, we find that nationwide, and over the entirety of the federal budget window, the enhanced federal matching funds are of roughly the same magnitude as expected increases in state Medicaid costs. There is a difference in timing, however, as projected relief funds are more concentrated in the near term than projected spending needs. Second, we show that there is substantial variation in states' exposure to increases in Medicaid program costs. Third, we evaluate the extent to which federal aid has been targeted at states with large increases in Medicaid costs. We show that the enhanced Medicaid matching funds are quite weakly correlated with variations in states' cost increases. In contrast, the state aid formula in the American Recovery Plan Act appears, to at least a moderate degree, to direct dollars toward states with large increases in their Medicaid enrollments."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Clemens, Jeffrey; Ippolito, Benedic N.; Veuger, Stan
2021-04
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Initial Impacts of the Pandemic on Consumer Behavior: Evidence from Linked Income, Spending, and Savings Data
From the Abstract: "We use U.S. household-level bank account data to investigate the heterogeneous effects of the pandemic on spending and savings. Households across the income distribution all cut spending from March to early April. Since mid April, spending has rebounded most rapidly for low-income households. We find large increases in liquid asset balances for households throughout the income distribution. However, lower-income households contribute disproportionately to the aggregate increase in balances, relative to their pre-pandemic shares. Taken together, our results suggest that spending declines in the initial months of the recession were primarily caused by direct effects of the pandemic, rather than resulting from labor market disruptions. The sizable growth in liquid assets we observe for low-income households suggests that stimulus and insurance programs during this period likely played an important role in limiting the effects of labor market disruptions on spending."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Ganong, Peter; Noel, Pascal; Vavra, Joseph . . .
2020-07
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Political Violence, Risk Aversion, and Non-Localized Disease Spread: Evidence from the U.S. Capitol Riot
From the Abstract: "On January 6, 2021, the U.S. Capitol was sieged by rioters protesting certification of Joseph R. Biden's election as the 46th president of the United States. The Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) quickly predicted that the Riot would be a COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] 'surge event.' This study is the first to estimate the impact of the Capitol Riot on risk-averting behavior and community-level spread of the novel coronavirus. First, using anonymized smartphone data from SafeGraph, Inc. and an event-study approach, we document that on January 6th there was a substantial increase in non-resident smartphone pings in the census block groups including the Ellipse, the National Mall, and the U.S. Capitol Building, consistent with a large protest that day. Next, using data from the same source and a synthetic control approach, we find that the Capitol Riot increased stay-at-home behavior among District of Columbia residents, indicative of risk averting behaviors in response to violence and health risks. Finally, turning to COVID-19 case data, we find no evidence that the Capitol Riot substantially increased community spread of COVID-19 in the District of Columbia in the month-long period following the event. This may be due to increases in social distancing and a 'virtual lockdown' of the Capitol prior to the inauguration of the new president. However, exploiting variation in nonresident smartphone inflows into the January 6 Capitol protest, we find that counties with the highest protester inflows experienced a significant increase in the rate of daily cumulative COVID-19 case growth in the month following the protest. We conclude that the Capitol Riot may have contributed to non-localized COVID-19 spread."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Dave, Dhaval M.; McNichols, Drew; Sabia, Joseph J.
2021-02
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Did Pandemic Unemployment Benefits Reduce Employment? Evidence from Early State-Level Expirations in June 2021
From the Abstract: "The generosity of Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits was expanded during the pandemic (FPUC [Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation]), along with the groups of workers eligible for benefits (PUA [Pandemic Unemployment Assistance]). These two programs were set to expire in September 2021, but 18 states opted out of both in June 2021. Using Current Population Survey data, we present difference-in-difference and event study estimates that the flow of unemployed workers into employment increased by around two-thirds following early termination. We construct a counterfactual scenario that implies the national unemployment rate in each of July and August would have been around 0.3 percentage point lower than they were, and the employment-population ratio would have been around 0.1-0.2 percentage point higher than it was, had all states ended FPUC and PUA in June. Expanded eligibility and generosity of UI may have both slowed transitions from unemployment to employment. We also present some suggestive evidence that households with relatively high confidence in their ability to meet expenses may have been less sensitive to the termination of expanded benefits. Finally, we present evidence that early termination reduced the share of households that had no difficulty meeting expenses by five percent. The welfare implications of the early termination of FPUC and PUA are therefore ambiguous."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Holzer, Harry J., 1957-; Hubbard, R. Glenn; Strain, Michael R.
2021-12
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COVID-19, Shelter-In Place Strategies and Tipping
From the Abstract: "Social distancing via shelter-in-place strategies has emerged as the most effective way to combat Covid-19 [coronavirus disease 2019]. In the United States, choices about such policies are made by individual states. Here we show that the policy choice made by one state influences the incentives that other states face to adopt similar policies: they can be viewed as strategic complements in a supermodular game. If they satisfy the condition of uniform strict increasing differences then following Heal and Kunreuther we show that if enough states engage in social distancing, they will tip others to do the same and thus shift the Nash equilibrium with respect to the number of states engaging in social distancing."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Cui, Zhihan; Heal, G. M.; Kunreuther, Howard
2020-05
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Risk Aversion, Offsetting Community Effects, and COVID-19: Evidence from an Indoor Political Rally
From the Abstract: "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) deems large indoor gatherings without social distancing the 'highest risk' activity for COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] contagion. On June 20, 2020, President Donald J. Trump held his first mass campaign rally following the US coronavirus outbreak at the indoor Bank of Oklahoma (BOK) arena. In the weeks following the event, numerous high-profile national news outlets reported that the Trump rally was 'more than likely' the cause of a coronavirus surge in Tulsa county based on time series data. This study is the first to rigorously explore the impacts of this event on social distancing and COVID-19 spread. First, using data from SafeGraph Inc, we show that while non-resident visits to census block groups hosting the Trump event grew by approximately 25 percent, there was no decline in net stay-at-home behavior in Tulsa county, reflecting important offsetting behavioral effects. Then, using data on COVID-19 cases and deaths from the CDC and a synthetic control design, we find little evidence that COVID-19 grew more rapidly in Tulsa County, its border counties, or in the state of Oklahoma than each's estimated counterfactual during the five-week post-treatment period we observe. Difference-in-differences estimates further provide no evidence that COVID-19 rates grew faster in counties that drew relatively larger shares of residents to the event. We conclude that offsetting risk-related behavioral responses to the rally -- including voluntary closures of restaurants and bars in downtown Tulsa, increases in stay-at-home behavior, displacement of usual activities of weekend inflows, and smaller-than-expected crowd attendance -- may be important mechanisms."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Dave, Dhaval M.; Friedson, Andrew; Matsuzawa, Kyutaro . . .
2020-08
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Assessing the Age Specificity of Infection Fatality Rates for COVID-19: Meta-Analysis & Public Policy Implications
From the Abstract: "This paper assesses the age specificity of the infection fatality rate (IFR) for COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019]. Our benchmark meta-regression synthesizes the age-specific IFRs from six recent large-scale seroprevalence studies conducted in Belgium, Geneva, Indiana, New York, Spain, and Sweden. The estimated IFR is close to zero for children and younger adults but rises exponentially with age, reaching about 0.3 percent for ages 50-59, 1.3 percent for ages 60-69, 4.6 percent for ages 70-79, and 25 percent for ages 80 and above. We compare those predictions to the age-specific IFRs implied by recent seroprevalence estimates for nine other U.S. locations, three [small]-scale studies, and three countries (Iceland, New Zealand, and Republic of Korea) that have engaged in comprehensive tracking and tracing of COVID-19 infections. We also review seroprevalence studies of 32 other locations whose design was not well-suited for estimating age-specific IFRs. Our findings indicate that COVID-19 is not just dangerous for the elderly and infirm but also for healthy middle-aged adults, for whom the fatality rate is more than 50 times greater than the risk of dying in an automobile accident. Consequently, the overall IFR for a given location is intrinsically linked to the age-specific pattern of infections. In a scenario where the U.S. infection rate reaches 20 percent, our analysis indicates that protecting vulnerable age groups could prevent more than 200,000 deaths."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Levin, Andrew T. (Andrew Theo); Cochran, Kensington; Walsh, Seamus P.
2020-07
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Inequality and the Coronavirus: Socioeconomic Covariates of Behavioral Responses and Viral Outcomes Across US Counties
From the Abstract: "Not much is obvious about how socioeconomic inequalities impact the spread of infectious diseases once one considers behavioral responses, correlations among multiple covariates and the likely non-linearities and dynamics involved. Social distancing responses to the threat of catching COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] and outcomes for infections and deaths are modelled across US counties, augmenting epidemiological and health covariates with within-county median incomes, poverty and income inequality, and age and racial composition. Systematic socioeconomic effects on social distancing and infections emerge, and most effects do not fade as the virus spreads. Deaths, once infected, are less responsive to socioeconomic covariates. Richer counties tend to see greater gains in social distancing and lower infection rates, controlling for more standard epidemiological factors. Income poverty and inequality tend to increase the infection rate, but these effects are largely accountable to their correlation with racial composition. A more elderly population increases deaths conditional on infections, but has an offsetting effect on the infection rate, consistent with the behavioral responses we find through social distancing."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Brown, Caitlin S.; Ravallion, Martin
2020-07
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Federal Aid to School Districts During the COVID-19 Recession
From the Abstract: "The coronavirus has created an enormous--and expensive--challenge for elementary and secondary schools, while simultaneously depleting the revenue sources on which public schools depend. During the Great Recession, the federal government filled in a significant share of lost revenue. In contrast, the federal response to date has been limited. If Congress decides to invest in future generations, it faces a range of options for how to structure an aid package. One key aspect for any stabilization package is how federal funds should be allocated to states. We consider the types of approaches used in recent proposals, during the Great Recession, and at the onset of the COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] crisis, as well as in major ongoing federal education programs for compensatory and special education. We simulate the distribution of funds and show the considerable difference in how per-child allocations correlate with child poverty rates under the most likely alternative approaches."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Reber, Sarah J.; Gordon, Nora
2020-07
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Natural Disasters and Elective Medical Services: How Big is the Bounce-Back?
From the Abstract: "COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] has created a dual set of stresses on health care systems worldwide: a rise in expensive intensive care services and a dramatic decline in elective services. The U.S. government has responded with both grant and loan programs to help health care providers weather the storm. But the optimal size and nature of such programs are hard to evaluate without an understanding of the ability of providers to make up their lost elective service revenues over time. In this paper, we study the closest relevant parallel to the reduction in elective services seen under COVID-19: hurricanes. We match information on hurricanes to data on Medicare hospital elective visits and charges from 1997-2013, comparing counties impacted by hurricanes to nearby unaffected counties. We find that the average hurricane reduces elective services by about 7% in the month it makes landfall. For the most severe hurricanes, we estimate a reduction of more than 20%. Services return to baseline fairly rapidly, but for severe hurricanes it takes a year or more to make up lost revenues. Projections based on variation in hurricane severity suggest that it will take over 3 years for providers to make up the lost revenue from COVID-19."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Deryugina, Tatyana; Gruber, Jonathan; Sabety, Adrienne
2020-07
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How Much Does COVID-19 Increase with Mobility? Evidence from New York and Four Other U.S. Cities
From the Abstract: "How effective are restrictions on geographic mobility in limiting the spread of the COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] pandemic? Using zip code data for Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, New York (NYC), and Philadelphia, we estimate that total COVID-19 cases per capita decrease on average by approximately 20 percent for every ten percentage point fall in mobility between February and May 2020. To address endogeneity concerns, we instrument for travel by the share of workers in remote work friendly occupations, and find a somewhat larger average decline of COVID-19 cases per capita of 27 percent. Using weekly data by zip code for NYC and a panel data specification including week and zip code fixed effects, we estimate a similar average decline of around 17 percent, which becomes larger when we measure mobility using NYC turnstile data rather than cellphone data. We find substantial heterogeneity across both space and over time, with stronger effects for NYC, Boston and Philadelphia than for Atlanta and Chicago, and the largest estimated coefficients for NYC in the early stages of the pandemic."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Glaeser, Edward L. (Edward Ludwig), 1967-; Gorback, Caitlin S.; Redding, Stephen J.
2020-07
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Measuring Movement and Social Contact with Smartphone Data: A Real-Time Application to COVID-19
From the Abstract: "Tracking human activity in real time and at fine spatial scale is particularly valuable during episodes such as the COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] pandemic. In this paper, we discuss the suitability of smartphone data for quantifying movement and social contact. We show that these data cover broad sections of the US population and exhibit movement patterns similar to conventional survey data. We develop and make publicly available a location exposure index that summarizes county-to-county movements and a device exposure index that quantifies social contact within venues. We use these indices to document how pandemic-induced reductions in activity vary across people and places."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Dingel, Jonathan I.; Couture, Victor; Handbury, Jessie . . .
2020-07
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Inequality in Household Adaptation to Schooling Shocks: Covid-Induced Online Learning Engagement in Real Time
From the Abstract: "We use high frequency internet search data to study in real time how US households sought out online learning resources as schools closed due to the Covid-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] pandemic. By April 2020, nationwide search intensity for both school- and parent-centered online learning resources had roughly doubled relative to baseline. Areas of the country with higher income, better internet access and fewer rural schools saw substantially larger increases in search intensity. The pandemic will likely widen achievement gaps along these dimensions given schools' and parents' differing engagement with online resources to compensate for lost school-based learning time. Accounting for such differences and promoting more equitable access to online learning could improve the effectiveness of education policy responses to the pandemic. The public availability of internet search data allows our analyses to be updated when schools reopen and to be replicated in other countries."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Mulhern, Christine; Bacher-Hicks, Andrew; Goodman, Joshua S.
2020-07
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Unintended Consequences of Lockdowns: COVID-19 and the Shadow Pandemic
From the Abstract: "Violence against women is a problem worldwide, with economic costs ranging from 1-4% of global GDP [gross domestic product]. Using variation in the intensity of government-mandated lockdowns in India, we show that domestic violence complaints increase by 0.47 SD in districts with the strictest lockdown rules. We find similarly large increases in cybercrime complaints. Interestingly, rape and sexual assault complaints decrease 0.4 SD during the same period in districts with the strictest lockdowns, consistent with decreased female mobility in public spaces, public transport, and workplaces. Attitudes toward domestic violence play an important role in the reporting and incidence of domestic violence during the lockdown."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Shah, Manisha; Ravindran, Saravana
2020-07
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Projecting Unemployment Durations: A Factor-Flows Simulation Approach with Application to the COVID-19 Recession
From the Abstract: "We propose a three-step factor-flows simulation-based approach to forecast the duration distribution of unemployment. Step 1: estimate individual transition hazards across employment, temporary layoff, permanent layoff, quitter, entrant, and out of the labor force, with each hazard depending on an aggregate component as well as an individual's labor force history. Step 2: relate the aggregate components to the overall unemployment rate using a factor model. Step 3: combine the individual duration dependence, factor structure, and an auxiliary forecast of the unemployment rate to simulate a panel of individual labor force histories. Applying our approach to the July Blue Chip forecast of the COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] recession, we project that 1.6 million workers laid off in April 2020 remain unemployed six months later. Total long-term unemployment rises thereafter and eventually reaches more 4.5 million individuals unemployed for more than 26 weeks and almost 2 million individuals unemployed for more than 46 weeks. Long-term unemployment rises even more in a more pessimistic recovery scenario, but remains below the level in the Great Recession due to a high amount of labor market churn."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Coglianese, John; Chodorow-Reich, Gabriel
2020-07
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Racial and Ethnic Disparities in COVID-19: Evidence from Six Large Cities
From the Abstract: "As of June 2020, the coronavirus pandemic has led to more than 2.3 million confirmed infections and 121 thousand fatalities in the United States, with starkly different incidence by race and ethnicity. Our study examines racial and ethnic disparities in confirmed COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] cases across six diverse cities - Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, New York City, San Diego, and St. Louis - at the ZIP [Zone Improvement Plan] code level (covering 436 'neighborhoods' with a population of 17.7 million). Our analysis links these outcomes to six separate data sources to control for demographics; housing; socioeconomic status; occupation; transportation modes; health care access; long-run opportunity, as measured by income mobility and incarceration rates; human mobility; and underlying population health. We find that the proportions of black and Hispanic residents in a ZIP code are both positively and statistically significantly associated with COVID-19 cases per capita. The magnitudes are sizeable for both black and Hispanic, but even larger for Hispanic. Although some of these disparities can be explained by differences in long-run opportunity, human mobility, and demographics, most of the disparities remain unexplained even after including an extensive list of covariates related to possible mechanisms. For two cities - Chicago and New York - we also examine COVID-19 fatalities, finding that differences in confirmed COVID-19 cases explain the majority of the observed disparities in fatalities. In other words, the higher death toll of COVID-19 in predominantly black and Hispanic communities mostly reflects higher case rates, rather than higher fatality rates for confirmed cases."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Yelowitz, Aaron S.; Courtemanche, Charles Joseph; Benitez, Joseph A.
2020-07
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Identification and Estimation of Undetected COVID-19 Cases Using Testing Data from Iceland
From the Abstract: "In the early stages of the COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] pandemic, international testing efforts tended to target individuals whose symptoms and/or jobs placed them at a high presumed risk of infection. Testing regimes of this sort potentially result in a high proportion of cases going undetected. Quantifying this parameter, which we refer to as the undetected rate, is an important contribution to the analysis of the early spread of the SARS-CoV-2 [severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2] virus. We show that partial identification techniques can credibly deal with the data problems that common COVID-19 testing programs induce (i.e. excluding quarantined individuals from testing and low participation in random screening programs). We use public data from two Icelandic testing regimes during the first month of the outbreak and estimate an identified interval for the undetected rate. Our main approach estimates that the undetected rate was between 89% and 93% before the medical system broadened its eligibility criteria and between 80% and 90% after."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Stock, James H.; Walker, Christopher D.; Aspelund, Karl M. . . .
2020-07
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Determinants of Fiscal and Monetary Policies During the Covid-19 Crisis
From the Abstract: "As countries around the world grapple with Covid-19 [coronavirus disease 2019], their economies are grinding to a halt. For the first time since the Great Depression both advanced economies and developing economies are in recession. Governments and central banks have responded to the pandemic and the economic crisis using both fiscal and monetary tools on a scale that the world has not witnessed before. This paper analyzes the determinants of fiscal and monetary policies during the Covid-19 crisis. We find that high-income countries announced larger fiscal policies than lower-income countries. We also find that a country's credit rating is the most important determinant of its fiscal spending during the pandemic. High-income countries entered the crisis with historically low interest rates and as a result were more likely to use nonconventional monetary policy tools. These findings raise the concern that countries with poor credit histories - those with lower credit ratings and, in particular, lower-income countries - will not be able to deploy fiscal policy tools effectively during economic crises."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Benmelech, Efraim; Tzur-Ilan, Nitzan
2020-07
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Private Precaution and Public Restrictions: What Drives Social Distancing and Industry Foot Traffic in the COVID-19 Era?
From the Abstract: "We examine the role of state and local policies to encourage social distancing, including stay at home orders, public school closures, and restrictions on restaurants, entertainment, and large social gatherings. Outcomes come from cell phone records and include foot traffic in six industries (essential and nonessential retail, entertainment, hotel, restaurant, and business services) plus the fraction of cell phones that are home all day. Structural break models show mobility series at the national and state levels start to change dramatically in a short window from March 8-14, well before state or local restrictions of note are in place. In difference-in-difference models, declarations of state of emergency reduce foot traffic and increase social distancing. Stay at home restrictions explain a modest fraction of the change in behavior across outcomes. Industry-specific restrictions have large impacts. For example, restrictions on dining in restaurants reduce traffic in restaurants, hotels, and nonessential retail. Private, self-regulating behavior explains more than three-quarters of the decline in foot traffic in most industries. Restrictive regulation explains half the decline in foot traffic in essential retail and 75 percent of the increase in the fraction home all day. In this latter result, public school closings have a substantial effect."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Evans, William N.; Cronin, Christopher J.
2020-07
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Business in a Time of Spanish Influenza
From the Abstract: "Mandated shutdowns of nonessential businesses during the COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] crisis brought into sharp relief the tradeoff between public health and a healthy economy. This paper documents the short-run effects of shutdowns during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, which provides a useful counterpoint to choices made in 2020. The 1918 closures were shorter and less sweeping, in part because the US was at war and the Wilson administration was unwilling to let public safety jeopardize the war's prosecution. The result was widespread sickness, which pushed some businesses to shutdown voluntarily; others operated shorthanded. Using hand-coded, high-frequency data (mostly weekly) this study reports three principal results. First, retail sales declined during the three waves of the pandemic; manufacturing activity slowed, but by less than retail. Second, worker absenteeism due to either sickness or fear of contracting the flu reduced output in several key sectors and industries that were not ordered closed by as much as 10 to 20% in weeks of high excess mortality. Output declines were the result of labor-supply rather than demand shocks. And, third, mandated closures are not associated with increases in the number or aggregate dollar value of business failures, but the number and aggregate dollar value of business failures increased modestly in weeks of high excess mortality. The results highlight that the tradeoff between mandated closures and economic activity is not the only relevant tradeoff facing public health authorities. Economic activity also declines, sometimes sharply, during periods of unusually high influenza-related illness and excess mortality even absent mandated business closures."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Bodenhorn, Howard
2020-07
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Impact of COVID-19 on Small Business Owners: Continued Losses and the Partial Rebound in May 2020
From the Abstract: "Social distancing restrictions and demand shifts from COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] shuttered many small businesses and entrepreneurs in the first month of widespread shelter-in-place restrictions. Fairlie (2020) finds that 22 percent of small business owners were inactive in April 2020 with disproportionate impacts on African-American, Latinx, immigrant, and female business owners. What happened in the second month of social distancing restrictions? Were there further closures or a rebound? This paper provides the first analysis of impacts of the pandemic on the number of active small businesses in the United States using nationally representative data from the May 2020 CPS [Current Population Survey]- the second month capturing effects from mandated restrictions."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Fairlie, Robert W.
2020-07
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Real-Time Real Economic Activity: Exiting the Great Recession and Entering the Pandemic Recession
From the Abstract: "We study the real-time signals provided by the Aruoba-Diebold-Scotti Index of Business conditions (ADS) for tracking economic activity at high frequency. We start with exit from the Great Recession, comparing the evolution of real-time vintage beliefs to a 'final' late-vintage chronology. We then consider entry into the Pandemic Recession, again tracking the evolution of real-time vintage beliefs. ADS swings widely as its underlying economic indicators swing widely, but the emerging ADS path as of this writing (late June) indicates a return to growth in May. The trajectory of the nascent recovery, however, is highly uncertain (particularly as COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] spreads in the South and West) and could be revised or eliminated as new data arrive."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Diebold, Francis X., 1959-
2020-07
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Older People Are Less Pessimistic About the Health Risks of Covid-19
From the Abstract: "A central question for understanding behaviour during the Covid-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] pandemic, at both the individual and collective levels, is how people perceive the health and economic risks they face. We conducted a survey of over 1,500 Americans from May 6 - 13, 2020, to understand these risk perceptions. Here we report some preliminary results. Our most striking finding is that perceived personal health risks associated with Covid-19 fall sharply with age."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Bordalo, Pedro; Gennaioli, Nicola; Shleifer, Andrei . . .
2020-07
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Electoral Concerns Reduce Restrictive Measures During the COVID-19 Pandemic
From the Abstract: "The outbreak of COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] has called for swift action by governments, often involving the adoption of restrictive measures such as lockdowns. In this context, leaders have faced a trade-off between imposing stringent measures to limit the contagion, and minimizing the costs on their national economy, which could impact their electoral prospects. Leveraging on both the timing of elections and the constitutional term limits faced by leaders, we document how incumbents who can run for re-election implement less stringent restrictions when the election is closer in time. The effect is driven by measures more likely to have a negative economic impact. This shows how electoral concerns help explain the observed differences in the response to COVID-19 across different countries."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Pulejo, Massimo; Querubín, Pablo
2020-07
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Does Policy Communication During COVID Work?
From the Abstract: "Using a large-scale survey of U.S. households during the Covid-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] pandemic, we study how new information about fiscal and monetary policy responses to the crisis affects households' expectations. We provide random subsets of participants in the Nielsen Homescan panel with different combinations of information about the severity of the pandemic, recent actions by the Federal Reserve, stimulus measures, as well as recommendations from health officials. This experiment allows us to assess to what extent these policy announcements alter the beliefs and spending plans of households. In short, they do not, contrary to the powerful effects they have in standard macroeconomic models."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Coibion, Olivier; Gorodnichenko, Yuriy; Weber, Michael (Professor of finance)
2020-06
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Effectiveness of Life-Preserving Investments in Times of COVID-19
From the Abstract: "We analyze the effectiveness of preventive investments aimed at increasing agents' life expectancy, with a focus on influenza and COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] mitigation. Maximizing overall life expectancy requires allocating resources across hazards so as to equalize investments' marginal effectiveness. Based on estimates for the marginal effectiveness of influenza vaccines, we determine the level of COVID-19 mitigation investments that would imply such equalization. Given current projections for COVID-19 mitigation costs, our results suggest that wide-spread influenza vaccination would be an effective life-preserving investment."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Binsbergen, Jules H. van; Opp, Christian C.
2020-06
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Financing Vaccines for Global Health Security
From the Abstract: "Recent outbreaks of infectious pathogens such as Zika, Ebola, and COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] have underscored the need for the dependable availability of vaccines against emerging infectious diseases (EIDs). The cost and risk of R&D [research & development] programs and uniquely unpredictable demand for EID vaccines have discouraged vaccine developers, and government and nonprofit agencies have been unable to provide timely or sufficient incentives for their development and sustained supply. We analyze the economic returns of a portfolio of EID vaccine assets, and find that under realistic financing assumptions, the expected returns are significantly negative, implying that the private sector is unlikely to address this need without public-sector intervention. We have sized the financing deficit for this portfolio and analyze several potential solutions, including price increases, enhanced public-private partnerships, and subscription models through which individuals would pay annual fees to obtain access to a portfolio of vaccines in the event of an outbreak."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Vu, Jonathan T.; Kaplan, Benjamin K.; Chaudhuri, Shomesh . . .
2020-05
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Impact of COVID-19 on Gender Equality
From the Abstract: "The economic downturn caused by the current COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] outbreak has substantial implications for gender equality, both during the downturn and the subsequent recovery. Compared to 'regular' recessions, which affect men's employment more severely than women's employment, the employment drop related to social distancing measures has a large impact on sectors with high female employment shares. In addition, closures of schools and daycare centers have massively increased child care needs, which has a particularly large impact on working mothers. The effects of the crisis on working mothers are likely to be persistent, due to high returns to experience in the labor market. Beyond the immediate crisis, there are opposing forces which may ultimately promote gender equality in the labor market. First, businesses are rapidly adopting flexible work arrangements, which are likely to persist. Second, there are also many fathers who now have to take primary responsibility for child care, which may erode social norms that currently lead to a lopsided distribution of the division of labor in house work and child care."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Alon, Titan M.; Doepke, Matthias; Olmstead-Rumsey, Jane . . .
2020-04
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Social Distancing, Internet Access and Inequality
From the Abstract: "This paper measures the role of the diffusion of high-speed Internet on an individual's ability to self-isolate during a global pandemic. We use data that tracks 20 million mobile devices and their movements across physical locations, and whether the mobile devices leave their homes that day. We show that while income is correlated with differences in the ability to stay at home, the unequal diffusion of high-speed Internet in homes across regions drives much of this observed income effect. We examine compliance with state-level directives to avoid leaving your home. Devices in regions with either high-income or high-speed Internet are less likely to leave their homes after such a directive. However, the combination of having both high income and high-speed Internet appears to be the biggest driver of propensity to stay at home. Our results suggest that the digital divide---or the fact that income and home Internet access are correlated---appears to explain much inequality we observe in people's ability to self-isolate."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Chiou, Lesley; Tucker, Catherine (Catherine Elizabeth)
2020-04
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Data Gaps and the Policy Response to the Novel Coronavirus
From the Abstract: "This note lays out the basic Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) epidemiological model of contagion, with a target audience of economists who want a framework for understanding the effects of social distancing and containment policies on the evolution of contagion and interactions with the economy. A key parameter, the asymptomatic rate (the fraction of the infected that are not tested under current guidelines), is not well estimated in the literature because tests for the coronavirus have been targeted at the sick and vulnerable, however it could be estimated by random sampling of the population. In this simple model, different policies that yield the same transmission rate β have the same health outcomes but can have very different economic costs. Thus, one way to frame the economics of shutdown policy is as finding the most efficient policies to achieve a given β, then determining the path of β that trades off the economic cost against the cost of excess lives lost by overwhelming the health care system."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Stock, James H.
2020-03
