Advanced search Help
Searching for terms: EXACT: "National Bureau of Economic Research" in: publisher
Clear all search criteria
Only 2/3! You are seeing results from the Public Collection, not the complete Full Collection. Sign in to search everything (see eligibility).
-
Persuasive Effect of Fox News: Non-Compliance with Social Distancing During the COVID-19 Pandemic
From the Abstract: "We test for and measure the effects of cable news in the US on regional differences in compliance with recommendations by health experts to practice social distancing during the early stages of the COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] pandemic. We use a quasi-experimental design to estimate the causal effect of Fox News viewership on stay-at-home behavior by using only the incremental local viewership due to the quasi-random assignment of channel positions in a local cable line-up. We find that a 10% increase in Fox News cable viewership (approximately 0.13 higher viewer rating points) leads to a 1.3 percentage point reduction in the propensity to stay at home. We find a persuasion rate of Fox News on non-compliance with stay-at-home behavior during the crisis of about 11.9% - 25.7% across our various social distancing metrics."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Simonov, Andrey; Sacher, Szymon K.; Dubé, Jean-Pierre H. . . .
2020-05
-
Relationship Between in-Person Voting and COVID-19: Evidence from the Wisconsin Primary
From the Abstract: "On April 7, 2020, Wisconsin held a major election for state positions and presidential preferences for both major parties. News reports showed pictures of long lines of voters due to fewer polling locations and suggested that the election may further the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 [severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2] virus. A contact-tracing analysis by the Wisconsin Department of Health Services identified 71 confirmed cases of COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] to in-person voting, but no research has conducted a broader analysis of the extent to which in-person voting increased the number of COVID-19 cases. We use county level data on voting and COVID-19 tests to connect the election to the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. We find a statistically and economically significant association between in-person voting and the spread of COVID-19 two to three weeks after the election. Results indicate that on average a 10% difference in in-person voters per polling location between counties is associated with approximately a 17.7% increase in the positive test rate. Further, extrapolation of estimates from the average county suggests that in-person voting was related to approximately 700 more COVID-19 cases in Wisconsin during the weeks following the election, or about 7.7% of the total number of confirmed cases during the five week post-treatment time period studied."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Cotti, Chad D.; Engelhardt, Bryan; Foster, Joshua . . .
2020-05
-
COVID19 and the Macroeconomic Effects of Costly Disasters
From the Abstract: "The outbreak of covid19 [coronavirus disease 2019] has significantly disrupted the economy. This note attempts to quantify the macroeconomic impact of costly and deadly disasters in recent US history, and to translate these estimates into an analysis of the likely impact of covid19. A costly disaster series is constructed over the sample 1980:1-2019:12 and the dynamic impact of a costly disaster shock on economic activity and on uncertainty is studied using a VAR [variable vector autoregression]. Unlike past natural disasters, covid19 is a multi-month shock that is not local in nature, disrupts labor market activities rather than destroys capital, and harms the social and physical well being of individuals. Calibrating different shock profiles to reflect these features, we find that the effects of the event last from two months to over a year, depending on the sector of the economy. Even a conservative calibration of a 3-month, 60 standard deviation shock is forecast to lead to a cumulative loss in industrial production of 12.75% and in service sector employment of nearly 17% or 24 million jobs over a period of ten months, with increases in macro uncertainty that last five months."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Ludvigson, Sydney C., 1964-; Ma, Sai (Economist); Ng, Serena, 1959-
2020-04
-
Geographic Spread of COVID-19 Correlates with Structure of Social Networks as Measured by Facebook
From the Abstract: "We use anonymized and aggregated data from Facebook to show that areas with stronger social ties to two early COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] 'hotspots' (Westchester County, NY, in the U.S. and Lodi province in Italy) generally have more confirmed COVID-19 cases as of March 30, 2020. These relationships hold after controlling for geographic distance to the hotspots as well as for the income and population density of the regions. These results suggest that data from online social networks may prove useful to epidemiologists and others hoping to forecast the spread of communicable diseases such as COVID-19."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Kuchler, Theresa; Russel, Dominic; Stroebel, Johannes
2020-04
-
COVID-19: Testing Inequality in New York City
From the Abstract: "Motivated by reports in the media suggesting unequal access to Covid-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] testing across incomes, we analyze zip-code level data on the number of Covid-19 tests, test results, and income per capita in New York City. We find that the number of tests administered is evenly distributed across income levels. In particular, the test distribution across income levels is significantly more egalitarian than the distribution of income itself: The ten percent of the city's population living in the richest zip codes received 11 percent of the Covid-19 tests and 29 percent of the city's income. The ten percent of the city's population living in the poorest zip codes received 10 percent of the tests but only 4 percent of the city's income. At the same time, we find significant disparity in the fraction of tests that come back negative for the Covid-19 disease across income levels: moving from the poorest zip codes to the richest zip codes is associated with an increase in the fraction of negative Covid-19 test results from 38 to 65 percent."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Schmitt-Grohé, Stephanie; Teoh, Ken; Uribe, Martin
2020-04
-
Leaving No Ethical Value Behind: Triage Protocol Design for Pandemic Rationing
From the Abstract:"Rationing of medical resources is a critical issue in the COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] pandemic. Most existing triage protocols are based on a priority point system, in which a formula specifies the order in which the supply of a resource, such as a ventilator, is to be rationed for patients. A priority point system generates an identical priority ranking specifying claims on all units. Triage protocols in some states (e.g. Michigan) prioritize frontline health workers giving heavier weight to the ethical principle of instrumental value. Others (e.g. New York) do not, reasoning that if frontline workers obtain high enough priority, there is a risk that they obtain all units and none remain for the general community. This debate is pressing given substantial COVID-19 health risks for frontline workers. In this paper, we analyze the consequences of rationing medical resources through a reserve system. In a reserve system, resources are placed into multiple categories. Priorities guiding allocation of units can reflect different ethical values between these categories. A reserve system provides additional flexibility over a priority point system because it does not dictate a single priority order for the allocation of all units. It offers a middle-ground approach that balances competing objectives, such as in the medical worker debate. This flexibility requires attention to implementation, especially the processing order of reserve categories. We describe our model of a reserve system, characterize its potential outcomes, and examine distributional implications of particular reserve systems. We also discuss several practical considerations with triage protocol design."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Pathak, Parag A.; Sönmez, Tayfun; Unver, M. Utku . . .
2020-04
-
Were Urban Cowboys Enough to Control COVID-19? Local Shelter-In-Place Orders and Coronavirus Case Growth
From the Abstract: "One of the most common policy prescriptions to reduce the spread of COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] has been to legally enforce social distancing through state or local shelter-in-place orders (SIPOs). This paper is the first to explore the comparative effectiveness of early county-level SIPOs versus later statewide mandates in curbing COVID-19 growth. We exploit the unique laboratory of Texas, a state in which the early adoption of local SIPOs by densely populated counties covered almost two-thirds of the state's population prior to Texas's adoption of a statewide SIPO on April 2, 2020. Using an event study framework, we document that countywide SIPO adoption is associated with a 14 percent increase in the percent of residents who remain at home full-time, a social distancing effect that is largest in urbanized and densely populated counties. Then, we find that in early adopting counties, COVID-19 case growth fell by 19 to 26 percentage points two-and-a-half weeks following adoption of a SIPO, a result robust to controls for county-level heterogeneity in outbreak timing, coronavirus testing, and border SIPO policies. This effect is driven nearly entirely by highly urbanized and densely populated counties. We find that approximately 90 percent of the curbed growth in COVID-19 cases in Texas came from the early adoption of SIPOs by urbanized counties, suggesting that the later statewide shelter-in-place mandate yielded relatively few health benefits."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Dave, Dhaval; Friedson, Andrew; Matsuzawa, Kyutaro . . .
2020-05
-
Fiscal Policy and COVID19 Restrictions in a Demand-Determined Economy
From the Abstract: "We evaluate the effects of COVID19 [coronavirus disease 2019] restrictions and fiscal policy in a model featuring economic slack. The restrictions can reduce current-period GDP [gross domestic product] by more than is directly associated with the restrictions themselves even if prices and wages are flexible, households can smooth consumption, and workers are mobile across sectors. The most effective fiscal policies depend on (a) the joint distribution of capital operating costs with respect to firm revenues, (b) the extent to which the price of capital adjusts, and (c) additional factors that determine whether the economy will enter a boom or a slump after the restrictions are lifted, such as the effect of the restrictions on inequality and on spending by high-income households."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Auerbach, Alan J.; Gorodnichenko, Yuriy; Murphy, Daniel E.
2020-06
-
How Deadly is COVID-19? Understanding the Difficulties with Estimation of Its Fatality Rate
From the Abstract: "To understand how best to combat COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019], we must understand how deadly is the disease. There is a substantial debate in the epidemiological literature as to whether the fatality rate is 1% or 0.1% or somewhere in between. In this note, I use an SIR [Susceptible-infected-recovered] model to examine why it is difficult to estimate the fatality rate from the disease and how long we might have to wait to resolve this question absent a large-scale randomized testing program. I focus on uncertainty over the joint distribution of the fatality rate and the initial number of active cases at the start of the epidemic around January 15, 2020. I show how the model with a high initial number of active cases and a low fatality rate gives the same predictions for the evolution of the number of deaths in the early stages of the pandemic as the same model with a low initial number of active cases and a high fatality rate. The problem of distinguishing these two parameterizations of the model becomes more severe in the presence of effective mitigation measures. As discussed by many, this uncertainty could be resolved now with large-scale randomized testing."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Atkeson, Andrew
2020-04
-
Effect of a Federal Paid Sick Leave Mandate on Working and Staying at Home: Evidence from Cellular Device Data
From the Abstract: "We study the effects of the temporary federal paid sick leave mandate that became effective April 1st, 2020 on 'social distancing,' as proxied by physical mobility behavior gleaned from cellular devices. The national paid leave policy was implemented in response to the COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] outbreak and provided many private and many public employees, including individuals employed in the gig economy, with up to two weeks of paid leave. We study the early impact of the federal paid sick leave policy using interrupted time series analyses and difference-in-differences methods leveraging pre-FFCRA [Families First Coronavirus Response Act] county-level differences in mobility. Our proxies for the ability to social distance are the share of cellular devices that are located in the workplace eight or more hours per day ('full-time work') and leave the home for less than one hour per day ('at home') in each county. Our findings suggest that the federal mandate decreased our full-time work proxy and increased our at home proxy. In particular, we find an initial decrease in working full-time of 17.7% and increase in staying home of 7.5%, with effects dissipating within three weeks. Given that up to 47% of employees are covered by the federal mandate, our effect sizes are arguably non-trivial."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Andersen, Martin; Maclean, Johanna Catherine; Pesko, Michael F. . . .
2020-05
-
Coronavirus Epidemic Curve is Already Flattening in New York City
From the Abstract: "New York City has been rightly characterized as the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States. Just one month after the first cases of coronavirus infection were reported in the city, the burden of infected individuals with serious complications of COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] has already outstripped the capacity of many of the city's hospitals. As in the case of most pandemics, scientists and public officials don't have complete, accurate, real-time data on the path of new infections. Despite these data inadequacies, there already appears to be sufficient evidence to conclude that the curve in New York City is indeed flattening. The purpose of this report is to set forth the evidence for - and against - this preliminary but potentially important conclusion. Having examined the evidence, we then inquire: if the curve is indeed flattening, do we know what caused to it to level off?"
National Bureau of Economic Research
Harris, Jeffrey E.
2020-04
-
Deadly Debt Crises: COVID-19 in Emerging Markets
From the Abstract: "The COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] epidemic in emerging markets risks a combined health, economic, and debt crisis. We integrate a standard epidemiology model into a sovereign default model and study how default risk impacts the ability of these countries to respond to the epidemic. Lockdown policies are useful for alleviating the health crisis but they carry large economic costs and can generate costly and prolonged debt crises. The possibility of lockdown induced debt crises in turn results in less aggressive lockdowns and a more severe health crisis. We find that the social value of debt relief can be substantial because it can prevent the debt crisis and can save lives."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Arellano, Cristina; Bai, Yan; Mihalache, Gabriel P.
2020-05
-
When Selling Becomes Viral: Disruptions in Debt Markets in the COVID-19 Crisis and the Fed's Response
From the Abstract: "We study disruptions in debt markets during the COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] crisis. The safer end of the credit spectrum experienced significant losses that are hard to fully reconcile with standard default or risk premium channels. Corporate bonds traded at a large discount to their corresponding CDS [credit default swap], and this basis widened most for safer bonds. Liquid bond ETFs [exchange-traded funds] traded at a large discount to their NAV [net asset value], more so for Treasuries, municipal bonds, and investment-grade corporate than high-yield corporate. These facts suggest investors tried to sell safer, more liquid securities to raise cash. These disruptions disappeared nearly as fast as they appeared. We trace this recovery back to the unprecedented actions the Fed took to purchase corporate bonds rather than its interventions in extending credit. The March 23rd announcement to buy investment-grade debt boosted prices and lowered bond spreads (particularly at shorter maturities and the safer end of investment-grade) while having virtually no effect on high-yield debt. April 9th, in contrast, had a large effect on both investment-grade and high-yield, even for the riskier end of high yield which would only indirectly benefit from the policy. These facts highlight the importance of financial frictions early on in the crisis, but also challenge existing theories of these frictions."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Haddad, Valentin; Moreira, Alan; Muir, Tyler
2020-05
-
Great Lockdown and the Big Stimulus: Tracing the Pandemic Possibility Frontier for the U.S.
From the Abstract: "We provide a quantitative analysis of the trade-offs between health outcomes and the distribution of economic outcomes associated with alternative policy responses to the COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] pandemic. We integrate an expanded SIR model of virus spread into a macroeconomic model with realistic income and wealth inequality, as well as occupational and sectoral heterogeneity. In the model, as in the data, economic exposure to the pandemic is strongly correlated with financial vulnerability, leading to very uneven economic losses across the population. We summarize our findings through a distributional pandemic possibility frontier, which shows the distribution of economic welfare costs associated with the different aggregate mortality rates arising under alternative containment and fiscal strategies. For all combinations of health and economic policies we consider, the economic welfare costs of the pandemic are large and heterogeneous. Thus, the choice governments face when designing policy is not just between lives and livelihoods, as is often emphasized, but also over who should bear the burden of the economic costs. We offer a quantitative framework to evaluate both trade-offs."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Kaplan, Greg, 1978-; Violante, Giovanni L.; Moll, Benjamin
2020-09
-
Face Masks, Public Policies and Slowing the Spread of COVID-19: Evidence from Canada
From the Abstract: "We estimate the impact of mask mandates and other non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) on COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] case growth in Canada, including regulations on businesses and gatherings, school closures, travel and self-isolation, and long-term care homes. We partially account for behavioral responses using Google mobility data. Our identification approach exploits variation in the timing of indoor face mask mandates staggered over two months in the 34 public health regions in Ontario, Canada's most populous province. We find that, in the first few weeks after implementation, mask mandates are associated with a reduction of 25 percent in the weekly number of new COVID-19 cases. Additional analysis with province-level data provides corroborating evidence. Counterfactual policy simulations suggest that mandating indoor masks nationwide in early July could have reduced the weekly number of new cases in Canada by 25 to 40 percent in mid-August, which translates into 700 to 1,100 fewer cases per week."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Karaivanov, Alexander; En Lu, Shih; Shigeoka, Hitoshi . . .
2020-10
-
1918 Influenza Pandemic and Its Lessons for COVID-19
From the Abstract: "This article reviews the global health and economic consequences of the 1918 influenza pandemic, with a particular focus on topics that have seen a renewed interest because of COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019]. We begin by providing an overview of key contextual and epidemiological details as well as the data that are available to researchers. We then examine the effects on mortality, fertility, and the economy in the short and medium run. The role of nonpharmaceutical interventions in shaping those outcomes is discussed throughout. We then examine longer-lasting health consequences and their impact on human capital accumulation and socioeconomic status. Throughout the paper we highlight important areas for future work."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Beach, Brian (Microeconomist); Clay, Karen; Saavedra, Martin H.
2020-08
-
Social Learning Along International Migrant Networks
From the Abstract: "We document the transmission of social distancing practices from the United States to Mexico along migrant networks during the early 2020 Covid-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] pandemic. Using data on pre-existing migrant connections between Mexican and U.S. locations and mobile-phone tracking data revealing social distancing behavior, we find larger declines in mobility in Mexican regions whose emigrants live in U.S. locations with stronger social distancing practices. We rule out confounding pre-trends and use a variety of controls and an instrumental variables strategy based on U.S. stay-at-home orders to rule out the potential influence of disease transmission and migrant sorting between similar locations. Given this evidence, we conclude that our findings represent the effect of information transmission between Mexican migrants living in the U.S. and residents of their home locations in Mexico. Our results demonstrate the importance of personal connections when policymakers seek to change fundamental social behaviors."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Tian, Yuan; Caballero, María Esther; Kovak, Brian K.
2020-08
-
Does FinTech Substitute for Banks? Evidence from the Paycheck Protection Program
From the Abstract: "New technology promises to expand the supply of financial services to borrowers poorly served by the banking system. Does it succeed? We study the response of FinTech to financial services demand created by the introduction of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). We find that FinTech is disproportionately used in ZIP codes with fewer bank branches, lower incomes, and a larger minority share of the population, as well as in industries with little ex ante small-business lending. Its role in PPP provision is also greater in counties where the economic effects of the COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] pandemic were more severe. To understand whether these differences arise because certain groups are switching from traditional banks to FinTech or if they are being newly served by FinTech, we study whether FinTech-enabled PPP loans were more widespread in areas with fewer traditional loans. Using the predicted responsiveness of traditional banks to the program as an instrument, we show that borrowers were more likely to get a FinTech-enabled PPP loan if they were located in ZIP codes where local banks were unlikely to originate PPP loans."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Erel, Isil; Liebersohn, Jack
2020-08
-
COVID-19 and Crime: Effects of Stay-At-Home Orders on Domestic Violence
From the Abstract: "COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] has led to an abrupt change in time spent at home, with many cities and states implementing official stay-at-home (SAH), or 'lockdown' policies. Using cell phone block-level activity data and administrative 911 and crime data from the city of Chicago, we estimate the effects of the Illinois governor's SAH order on calls for police service, crimes recorded by police, and arrests made relating to domestic violence. We find that the SAH order announcement increased time spent at home, leading to a decrease in total calls for police service, but a subsequent increase in domestic violence-related calls for police service. Effects are larger in areas with a high proportion of renters. These effects for domestic violence calls, however, are at odds with reported domestic-related crimes and arrests by police officers; we find that official reports and arrests for domestic violence crimes fell by 8.7 percent and 26.3 percent, respectively. Trends in reported domestic violence crimes mirror drops in total reported crimes; however, declines for domestic violence crimes are an order of magnitude smaller than the decline in other non-violent crime rates. Overall, we estimate that nearly 1,000 cases of domestic violence crimes went underreported between March and April."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Bullinger, Lindsey Rose; Carr, Jillian B.; Packham, Analisa
2020-08
-
Norwegian and US Policies Alleviate Business Vulnerability Due to the COVID-19 Shock Equally Well
From the Abstract: "We use Norwegian administrative data and applications for emergency government support to simulate magnitude and distribution of business revenue shock due to the Covid-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] pandemic. We rely on it to analyze the impact of business support policies available in Norway and the United States by comparing simulated results from the various policies on a common data set. We find that policies supporting payroll and fixed costs that were available in both countries have a similar impact of reducing firms' economic distress, by cutting the negative effect of the crisis on profitability, liquidity, debt, and solvency by over a half."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Alstadsæter, Annette; Bjørkheim, Julie Brun; Kopczuk, Wojciech . . .
2020-08
-
Learning from Deregulation: The Asymmetric Impact of Lockdown and Reopening on Risky Behavior During COVID-19
From the Abstract: "During the COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] pandemic, states issued and then rescinded stay-at-home orders that restricted mobility. We develop a model of learning by deregulation, which predicts that lifting stay-at-home orders can signal that going out has become safer. Using restaurant activity data, we find that the implementation of stay-at-home orders initially had a limited impact, but that activity rose quickly after states' reopenings. The results suggest that consumers inferred from reopening that it was safer to eat out. The rational, but mistaken inference that occurs in our model may explain why a sharp rise of COVID-19 cases followed reopening in some states."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Glaeser, Edward L. (Edward Ludwig), 1967-; Jin, Ginger Zhe; Leyden, Benjamin T. . . .
2020-08
-
Effect of Fiscal Stimulus: Evidence from COVID-19
From the Abstract: "Policymakers, faced with different options for replacing lost earnings, have had limited evidence to inform their decisions. The current economic crisis has highlighted the need for data that are local and timely so that different fiscal policy options on local economies can be more immediately evaluated. This paper provides a framework for evaluating real-time effects of fiscal policy on local economic activity using two new sources of near real-time data. The first data source is administrative records that provide universal, weekly, information on unemployment claimants. The second data source is transaction level data on economic activity that are available on a daily basis. We use shift-share approaches, combined with these two data sources and the novel cross-county variation in the incidence of the COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] supplement to Unemployment Insurance to estimate the local impact of unemployment, earnings replacement, and their interaction on economic activity. We find that higher replacement rates lead to significantly more consumer spending - even with increases in the unemployment rate - consistent with the goal of the fiscal stimulus. Our estimates suggest that, based on the latest data, eliminating the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC) supplement would lead to a 44% decline in local spending. If the FPUC supplement is reduced to $200, resulting in a reduction of the replacement rate by 44%, spending would fall by 28%. Even if the FPUC supplement is reduced to $400, the replacement rate would fall by 29% and spending would fall by 12%. Because these data are available in every state, the approach can be used to inform decision making not just in this current crisis, but also in future recessions."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Casado, Miguel Garza; Glennon, Britta; Lane, Julia . . .
2020-08
-
Four Stylized Facts About COVID-19
From the Abstract: "We document four facts about the COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] pandemic worldwide relevant for those studying the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) on COVID-19 transmission. First: across all countries and U.S. states that we study, the growth rates of daily deaths from COVID-19 fell from a wide range of initially high levels to levels close to zero within 20-30 days after each region experienced 25 cumulative deaths. Second: after this initial period, growth rates of daily deaths have hovered around zero or below everywhere in the world. Third: the cross section standard deviation of growth rates of daily deaths across locations fell very rapidly in the first 10 days of the epidemic and has remained at a relatively low level since then. Fourth: when interpreted through a range of epidemiological models, these first three facts about the growth rate of COVID deaths imply that both the effective reproduction numbers and transmission rates of COVID-19 fell from widely dispersed initial levels and the effective reproduction number has hovered around one after the first 30 days of the epidemic virtually everywhere in the world. We argue that failing to account for these four stylized facts may result in overstating the importance of policy mandated NPIs for shaping the progression of this deadly pandemic."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Atkeson, Andrew; Kopecky, Karen A.; Zha, Tao
2020-08
-
On Socializing and Social Distancing in Markets: Implications for Retail Prices, Store-Level Consumer Density, and Disease Transmission
From the Abstract: "I generalize the 'noisy search' model of Burdett and Judd (1983) to settings where individual buyers have preferences over the number of other buyers who visit the same seller as them. I consider a version in which buyers have a preference for social distancing derived from the risk of contracting a disease from other buyers, and use it to study the two-way equilibrium interaction between supply-side considerations (such as the distribution of prices posted by sellers) and individual buyers' behavioral responses to the risk of contagion. I find that the price response to the buyers' shift toward social distancing can be an important determinant of the degree to which buyers' individual behavioral responses to the risk of contagion can mitigate the spread of the disease."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Lagos, Ricardo A., 1969-
2020-08
-
Information Frictions and Access to the Paycheck Protection Program
From the Abstract: "The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) extended 669 billion dollars of forgivable loans in an unprecedented effort to support small businesses affected by the COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] crisis. This paper provides evidence that information frictions and the 'first-come, first-served' design of the PPP program skewed its resources towards larger firms and may have permanently reduced its effectiveness. Using new daily survey data on small businesses in the U.S., we show that the smallest businesses were less aware of the PPP and less likely to apply. If they did apply, the smallest businesses applied later, faced longer processing times, and were less likely to have their application approved. These frictions may have mattered, as businesses that received aid report fewer layoffs, higher employment, and improved expectations about the future."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Ulyssea, Gabriel; Neilson, Christopher; Humphries, John Eric
2020-07
-
Learning Epidemiology by Doing: The Empirical Implications of a Spatial-SIR Model with Behavioral Responses
From the Abstract: "We simulate a spatial behavioral model of the diffusion of an infection to understand the role of geographic characteristics: the number and distribution of outbreaks, population size, density, and agents' movements. We show that several invariance properties of the SIR model with respect to these variables do not hold when agents interact with neighbors in a (two dimensional) geographical space. Indeed, the local interactions arising in the spatial model give rise to matching frictions and local herd immunity effects which play a fundamental role in the dynamics of the infection. We also show that geographical factors affect how behavioral responses affect the epidemics. We derive relevant implications for the estimation of epidemiological models with panel data from several geographical units."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Moro, Andrea, 1967-; Bisin, Alberto
2020-07
-
Economic Consequences of R = 1: Towards a Workable Behavioural Epidemiological Model of Pandemics
From the Abstract: "This paper reviews the literature on incorporating behavioural elements into epidemiological models of pandemics. While modelling behaviour by forward-looking rational agents can provide some insight into the time paths of pandemics, the non-stationary nature of Susceptible-Infected-Removed (SIR) models of viral spread makes characterisation of resulting equilibria difficult. Here I posit a shortcut that can be deployed to allow for a tractable equilibrium model of pandemics with intuitive comparative statics and also a clear prediction that effective reproduction numbers (that is, R) will tend towards 1 in equilibrium. This motivates taking R =1 as an equilibrium starting point for analyses of pandemics with behavioural agents. The implications of this for the analysis of widespread testing, tracing, isolation and mask-use is discussed."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Gans, Joshua, 1968-
2020-07
-
Targeting and Impact of Paycheck Protection Program Loans to Small Businesses
From the Abstract: "The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) aimed to quickly deliver hundreds of billions of dollars of loans to small businesses, with the loans administered via private banks. In this paper, we use firm-level data to document the demand and supply of PPP funds. Using an instrumental variables approach, we find that PPP loans led to a 14 to 30 percentage point increase in a business's expected survival, and a positive but imprecise effect on employment. Moreover, the effects on survival were heterogeneous and highlight an important tradeoff faced by policymakers: while administering the loans via private banks allowed for rapid delivery of funds, it also limited the government's ability to target the funding - instead allowing pre-existing connections between businesses and banks to determine which firms would benefit from the program."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Bartik, Alexander W.; Cullen, Zoë B.; Glaeser, Edward L. (Edward Ludwig), 1967- . . .
2020-07
-
Effects of State COVID-19 Closure Policy on NON-COVID-19 Health Care Utilization
From the Abstract: "The U.S. health care system has experienced great pressure since early March 2020 as it pivoted to providing necessary care for COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] patients. But there are signs that non-COVID-19 care use declined during this time period. We examine near real time data from a nationwide electronic healthcare records system that covers over 35 million patients to provide new evidence of how non-COVID-19 acute care and preventive/primary care have been affected during the epidemic."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Simon, Kosali Ilayperuma; Wing, Coady; Ziedan, Engy
2020-07
-
Risk of Being a Fallen Angel and the Corporate Dash for Cash in the Midst of COVID
From the Abstract: "Data on firm-loan-level daily credit line drawdowns in the United States expose a corporate 'dash for cash' induced by the COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] pandemic. In the first phase of the crisis, which was characterized by extreme precaution and heightened aggregate risk, all firms drew down bank credit lines and raised cash levels. In the second phase, which followed the adoption of stabilization policies, only the highest-rated firms switched to capital markets to raise cash. Consistent with the risk of becoming a fallen angel, the lowest-quality BBB-rated firms behaved more similarly to non-investment grade firms. The observed corporate behavior reveals the significant impact of credit risk on corporate cash holdings."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Acharya, Viral V.; Steffen, Sascha
2020-07
