Socio-Demographic Factors Associated with Self-Protecting Behavior during the Covid-19 Pandemic

We develop a multi-​sectoral matching model to predict the impact of the lockdown on the US un­em­ploy­ment, con­sid­er­ing the het­ero­gene­ity of workers to account for the con­trasted impacts across various types of jobs. We show that sep­a­ra­tions and business closures that hit the workers with the first level of education explains the abrupt­ness of the un­em­ploy­ment rise. The existence of sig­nif­i­cant con­ges­tion ex­ter­nal­i­ties in the hiring process suggests that a comeback to the pre-​crisis un­em­ploy­ment level could be reached in 2024 in a scenario with a double wave. In the same scenario, a cal­i­bra­tion on French data leads to more pes­simistic forecasts with a comeback to the pre-​crisis un­em­ploy­ment level expected until 2027.

13439

The Lockdown Impact on Un­em­ploy­ment for Het­ero­ge­neous Workers

This paper estimates the link between pop­u­la­tion density and COVID-19 spread and severity in the con­tigu­ous United States. To overcome con­found­ing factors, we use two In­stru­men­tal Variable (IV) strate­gies that exploit ge­o­log­i­cal features and his­tor­i­cal pop­u­la­tions to induce exogenous variation in pop­u­la­tion density without affecting COVID-19 related deaths directly. We find that density has affected the timing of the outbreak in each county, with denser locations more likely to have an early outbreak. However, we find no evidence that pop­u­la­tion density is linked with COVID-19 cases and deaths. Using data from Google, Facebook and the US Census, we also in­ves­ti­gate several possible mech­a­nisms for our findings. We show that pop­u­la­tion density can affect the timing of outbreaks through higher con­nect­ed­ness of denser location. Fur­ther­more, we find that pop­u­la­tion density is pos­i­tively as­so­ci­ated with proxies of social dis­tanc­ing and neg­a­tively as­so­ci­ated with the age of the pop­u­la­tion, high­light­ing the im­por­tance of these mediating factors.

13440

Urban Density and COVID-19

159

I use simple cor­re­la­tions and re­gres­sion analysis to study how the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases and the number of deaths with Covid-19 per 100,000 people is related with the so­cioe­co­nomic char­ac­ter­is­tics of local areas in England and Wales. I find that local areas that have larger house­holds, worse levels of self-​reported health and a larger fraction of people using public transport have more Covid-19 in­fec­tions per 100,000 people. For mortality, household size and use of public transport are less important, but there is a clear relation with age, ethnicity and self-​reported health. Local areas with an older pop­u­la­tion, a larger share of black or Asian pop­u­la­tion and worse levels of self-​reported health have more Covid-19 deaths per 100,000 people. To prevent the spread of infection and reduce mortality, pol­i­cy­mak­ers should introduce measures to improve housing con­di­tions and improve the health of the pop­u­la­tion. Also, as many countries now begin to relax lockdown measures, they should pay par­tic­u­lar attention to reducing the risk of infection in public transport.

So­cioe­co­nomic De­ter­mi­nants of COVID-19 In­fec­tions and Mortality: Evidence from England and Wales

This paper in­ves­ti­gates the decline in traffic accidents, fa­tal­i­ties and injuries during the months that COVID-19 stay-​at-home orders im­ple­mented in Turkey. Taking into account the decline in accidents in March and April together, these rates roughly translate to 200 traffic related deaths and 17,600 injuries avoided during the months that stay-​at-home orders were in place. The Dif­fer­ence in Dif­fer­ence estimates that exploit variation in quar­an­tine orders among small cities, I also show that stricter rules in April are re­spon­si­ble for the decline of accidents with death or injury by 35 percent, death by 72 percent and injuries by 19 percent.

13278

COVID-19 Lockdowns and Decline in Traffic Related Deaths and Injuries

This paper employs a skills-​based approach to identify in­di­vid­ual and job factors most likely to be impacted by social dis­tanc­ing measures and practices due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Using data from the Cedefop European skills and jobs survey, a Covid-19 social dis­tanc­ing risk index (COV19R) is created based on skills de­scrip­tors that cat­e­gorise jobs by their level of physical proximity to others and their digital intensity. It is con­ser­v­a­tively estimated that about 45 million jobs in the EU-27 labour market (23% of total EU-27 em­ploy­ment) are faced with a very high risk of Covid-19 dis­rup­tion and another 22% of the EU workforce – mostly medium- to lower-​skilled service provision – is exposed to some sig­nif­i­cant risk. The burden of the Covid-19 social dis­tanc­ing risk falls dis­pro­por­tion­ately on vul­ner­a­ble workforce groups, such as women, older employees, non-​natives, the lower-​educated, those working longer hours and employed in micro-​sized work­places. The findings call for immediate and targeted policy responses to prevent ongoing job losses and widening of labour market and social in­equal­i­ties due to the pandemic.

13281

EU Jobs at Highest Risk of COVID-19 Social Dis­tanc­ing: Will the Pandemic Ex­ac­er­bate Labour Market Divide?

In this paper, we examine the short-​term con­se­quences of COVID-19 and evaluate the impacts of stay-​at-home orders on em­ploy­ment and wages in the United States. Guided by a pre-​analysis plan, we document that COVID-19 increased the un­em­ploy­ment rate, decreased hours of work and labor force par­tic­i­pa­tion, es­pe­cially for younger workers, non-white, not married and less-​educated workers. We built four indexes (exposure to disease, proximity to coworkers, work remotely and critical workers) to study the impact of COVID-19. We find that workers that can work remotely are sig­nif­i­cantly less likely to have their labor market outcomes affected, while workers working in proximity to coworkers are more affected. The un­em­ploy­ment effects are sig­nif­i­cantly larger for states that im­ple­mented stay-​at-home orders. Our estimates suggest that, as of early May, these policies increased un­em­ploy­ment by nearly 4 per­cent­age points, but reduced COVID-19 cases by 186,600– 311,000, and deaths by 17,851–23,325. We apply our estimates to compute lost income ($18.6–$21.4 billion), reduced gov­ern­ment income tax revenues ($3.4–$5.5 billion), increased un­em­ploy­ment insurance benefit payments ($5–$5.8 billion) and reduced hospital costs ($0.7–$1.2 billion). Despite the jobs lost, age adjusted value of sta­tis­ti­cal life suggests that stay-​at-home orders are cost effective.

13282

COVID-19, Stay-​At-Home Orders and Em­ploy­ment: Evidence from CPS Data

13293

We develop a multiple-​events model and exploit within and between country variation in the timing, type and level of intensity of various non-​pharmaceutical in­ter­ven­tions to study their dynamic effects on the daily incidence of COVID-19 and on pop­u­la­tion mobility patterns across 135 countries. Taking into account the con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous presence of multiple in­ter­ven­tions, we remove con­cur­rent policy bias from the effect of each policy of interest, and we establish that policies curb the epidemic by changing pop­u­la­tion mobility patterns in a manner con­sis­tent with time-use and epi­demi­o­log­i­cally relevant con­sid­er­a­tions. We are thus able to shed light on the mech­a­nisms through which con­fine­ment measures con­tribute to “flat­ten­ing the curve”.

Lockdown Strate­gies, Mobility Patterns and COVID-19

13294

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended the U.S. economy and labor market. We assess the initial spike in un­em­ploy­ment due to the virus response and possible paths for the official un­em­ploy­ment rate through 2021. Sub­stan­tial un­cer­tainty surrounds the path for measured un­em­ploy­ment, depending on the path of the virus and con­tain­ment measures and their impact on reported job search activity. We assess potential un­em­ploy­ment paths based on his­tor­i­cal patterns of monthly flows in and out of un­em­ploy­ment, adjusted for unique features of the virus economy. The possible paths vary widely, but absent hiring activity on an un­prece­dented scale, un­em­ploy­ment could remain in double-​digits into 2021. We also find that the increase in measured un­em­ploy­ment could be mean­ing­fully tempered by a sub­stan­tial reduction in labor force par­tic­i­pa­tion.

Un­em­ploy­ment Paths in a Pandemic Economy

13297

In March 2020, shelter-​in-place and social-​distancing policies have been enforced or rec­om­mended all over the world to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. However, strict con­tain­ment is hardly achiev­able in low-​income countries, as large parts of pop­u­la­tion are forced to continue income-​generating ac­tiv­i­ties to escape extreme poverty or hunger. To assess the trade-off between poverty and a higher risk of catching COVID-19, we use regional mobility to work and poverty rates across 241 regions of 9 countries from Latin America and Africa. With a difference-​in-difference approach around the time of lockdown an­nounce­ments, we measure the dif­fer­en­tial time variation in work mobility between high and low-​poverty regions. We find that the degree of work mobility reduction is sig­nif­i­cantly driven by the intensity of poverty. Con­sis­tently, human movements vary sig­nif­i­cantly more between poverty levels when it come to work rather than less vital ac­tiv­i­ties. We also estimate how higher poverty rates translate into a faster spread of COVID-19 cases through the channel of work mobility.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Poverty and COVID-19 in De­vel­op­ing Countries

The COVID19 pandemic has caused shocks to the demand for home childcare (with the closure of schools and nurseries) and the supply of home childcare (with many people not working). We collect real-time data on daily lives to document that UK families with young children have been doing the equiv­a­lent of a working week in childcare. Women have been doing the greater share, but overall, the gender childcare gap (the dif­fer­ence between the share of childcare done by women and the share done by men) for the ad­di­tional, post-​COVID19 hours is smaller than that for the al­lo­ca­tion of pre-COVID19 childcare. However, the amount of ad­di­tional childcare provided by men is very sensitive to their em­ploy­ment – the al­lo­ca­tion has become more equal in house­holds where men are working from home and where they have been fur­loughed/ lost their job. There are likely to be long-term im­pli­ca­tions from these changes – po­ten­tially negative for the careers of parents of young children; but also, more pos­i­tively for some families, for sharing the burden of childcare more equally in the future.

13302

Baby Steps: The Gender Division of Childcare during the COVID-19 Pandemic

13306

The COVID-19 pandemic has confined millions in their homes, rep­re­sent­ing an un­prece­dented case for spending more time together with family members. This situation is a challenge for house­holds, given that more time with the partner or children may not nec­es­sar­ily translate into increased well-​being. This paper explores sub­jec­tive well-​being in the uses of time for US and UK workers, dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing between solo ac­tiv­i­ties and ac­tiv­i­ties done with family members. Using the American and British time use surveys, we compute the instant utility as­so­ci­ated with paid work, unpaid work, leisure, and childcare ac­tiv­i­ties. The results show that workers prefer joint leisure to solo leisure, and sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences exist between female and male workers for solo and joint market work and housework. The con­clu­sions of this paper indicate that there are gender dif­fer­ences in the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on well-​being, affecting the time spent by in­di­vid­u­als in both paid and unpaid work.

Should We Cheer Together? Gender Dif­fer­ences in In­stan­ta­neous Well-​Being during Joint and Solo Ac­tiv­i­ties

During the recent COVID-19 pandemic, tra­di­tional (offline) chess tour­na­ments were pro­hib­ited and instead held online. We exploit this as a unique setting to assess the impact of moving offline tasks online on the cognitive per­for­mance of in­di­vid­u­als. We use the Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence embodied in a powerful chess engine to assess the quality of chess moves and as­so­ci­ated errors. Using within-​player com­par­isons, we find a sta­tis­ti­cally and eco­nom­i­cally sig­nif­i­cant decrease in per­for­mance when competing online compared to competing offline. Our results suggest that tele­work­ing might have adverse effects on workers per­form­ing cognitive tasks.

13491

Cognitive Per­for­mance in the Home Office – Evidence from Pro­fes­sional Chess

Despite a growing lit­er­a­ture on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, scant evidence currently exists on its impacts on air quality. We offer the first study that provides cross-​national evidence on the causal impacts of COVID-19 on air pollution. We assemble a rich database con­sist­ing of daily, sub-​national level data of air quality for 178 countries before and after the COVID-19 lockdowns, and in­ves­ti­gate their impacts on air quality using a Re­gres­sion Dis­con­ti­nu­ity Design approach. We find the lockdowns to result in sig­nif­i­cant decreases in global air pollution. These results are con­sis­tent across measures of air quality and data sources and robust to various model spec­i­fi­ca­tions. Some limited evidence emerges that countries with a higher share of trade and man­u­fac­tur­ing in the economy or with an initially lower level of air pollution witness more reduced air pollution after the lockdowns; but the opposite result holds for countries near the equator. We also find that mobility re­stric­tions following the lockdowns are a possible ex­pla­na­tion for improved air quality.

13480

Does the COVID-19 Pandemic Improve Global Air Quality? New Cross-​National Evidence on Its Un­in­tended Con­se­quences

This paper studies BMI as a correlate of the early spatial dis­tri­b­u­tion and intensity of Covid-19 across the districts of India and finds that con­di­tional on a range of in­di­vid­ual, household, and regional char­ac­ter­is­tics, adult BMI sig­nif­i­cantly predicts the like­li­hood that the district is a hotspot, the natural log of the confirmed number of cases, the case fatality rate, and the propen­sity that the district is a red zone. Con­trol­ling for air-​pollution, rainfall, tem­per­a­ture, de­mo­graphic factors that measure pop­u­la­tion density, the pro­por­tion of the elderly, and health in­fra­struc­ture including per capita health spending, the pro­por­tion of res­pi­ra­tory cases, and the number of viral disease outbreaks in the recent past, does not diminish the pre­dic­tive power of BMI in in­flu­enc­ing the spatial incidence and spread of the virus. The as­so­ci­a­tion between adult BMI and measures of spatial outcomes is es­pe­cially pro­nounced among educated pop­u­la­tions in urban settings, and im­per­vi­ous to con­di­tion­ing on dif­fer­ences in testing rates across states. We find that among women, BMI proxies for a range of co­mor­bidi­ties (he­mo­glo­bin, high blood pressure and high glucose levels) that affects the severity of the virus while among men, these health in­di­ca­tors are less important and exposure to risk of con­tract­ing the virus as measured by work propen­si­ties is ex­plana­tory. We conduct het­ero­gene­ity and sen­si­tiv­ity checks and control for dif­fer­ences that may arise due to vari­a­tions in timing of onset. Our results provide a readily available health marker that may be used to identify es­pe­cially at-risk pop­u­la­tions in de­vel­op­ing countries like India.

13444

Does BMI Predict the Early Spatial Variation and Intensity of COVID-19 in De­vel­op­ing Countries? Evidence from India

We study how patterns of in­ter­gen­er­a­tional residence possibly influence fa­tal­i­ties from Covid-19. We use aggregate data on Covid-19 deaths, the share of young adults living with their parents, and a number of other sta­tis­tics, for the 27 countries in the European Union, the UK, and all US states. Con­trol­ling for pop­u­la­tion size, we find that more people died from Covid in countries or states with higher rates of in­ter­gen­er­a­tional co-​residence. This positive cor­re­la­tion persists even when con­trol­ling for date of first death, presence of lockdown, Covid tests pc, hospital beds per capita, pro­por­tion of elderly, GDP pc, gov­ern­ment’s political ori­en­ta­tion, per­cent­age urban, and rental prices. The positive as­so­ci­a­tion between co-​residence and fa­tal­i­ties is led by the US. Our estimates pass the Oster test for selection on un­ob­serv­ables.

13452

In­ter­gen­er­a­tional Residence Patterns and COVID-19 Fa­tal­i­ties in the EU and the US

COVID-19 hit firms by surprise. In a high frequency, rep­re­sen­ta­tive panel of German firms, the business outlook declined and business un­cer­tainty increased only when the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic led to domestic policy changes: The an­nounce­ment of nation-​wide school closures on March 13 caused by far the largest change in business per­cep­tions. In contrast, business per­cep­tions hardly reacted to any other potential source of in­for­ma­tion: Firms did not learn from foreign policy measures, even if they relied on inputs from China or Italy. The local, county-​level spread of COVID-19 cases affected ex­pec­ta­tions and un­cer­tainty, albeit to a much lesser extent than the domestic policy changes.

13457

Sudden Stop: When Did Firms An­tic­i­pate the Potential Con­se­quences of COVID-19?

We in­ves­ti­gate gender dif­fer­ences across so­cioe­co­nomic and wellbeing di­men­sions after three months of lockdown in the UK, using an online sample of ap­prox­i­mately 1,500 re­spon­dents in Prolific, rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the UK pop­u­la­tion with regards to age, sex and ethnicity. We find that women’s mental health is worse than men’s along the four metrics we collected data on, that women are more concerned about getting and spreading the virus, and that women perceive the virus as more prevalent and lethal than men do. Women are also more likely to expect a new lockdown or virus outbreak by the end of 2020, and are more pes­simistic about the current and future state of the UK economy, as measured by their fore­casted present and future un­em­ploy­ment rates. Con­sis­tent with their more pes­simistic views about the economy, women choose to donate more to food banks. Women are more likely to have lost their job because of the pandemic, and working women are more likely to hold more coronavirus-​risky jobs than men. We also find that between February and June 2020 women have decreased their work hours, but increased housework and childcare much more than men. These gender in­equal­i­ties are not driven by dif­fer­ences in age, ethnicity, education, family structure, income in 2019, current em­ploy­ment status, place of residence or living in rural/urban areas.

Gender In­equal­ity in COVID-19 Times: Evidence from UK Prolific Par­tic­i­pants

13463

10.3386/w27494

A central question for understanding behaviour during the Covid-19 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.

Older People are Less Pessimistic about the Health Risks of Covid-19

10.3386/w27560

Tracking human activity in real time and at fine spatial scale is particularly valuable during episodes such as the COVID-19 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.

Measuring Movement and Social Contact with Smartphone Data: A Real-Time Application to COVID-19

10.3386/w26947

The economic downturn caused by the current COVID-19 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.

The Impact of COVID-19 on Gender Equality

10.3386/w26916

We study how intentions to comply with the self-isolation restrictions introduced in Italy to mitigate the COVID-19 epidemic respond to the length of their possible extension. Based on a survey of a representative sample of Italian residents (N=894), we find that respondents are more likely to express the intention to reduce, and less willing to increase their self-isolation effort if negatively surprised by a given hypothetical extension, i.e. if the extension is longer than what they expected. These intentions are stronger among respondents who reported high compliance with the isolation prescriptions. In a context where individual compliance has collective benefits, but full enforcement is costly and controversial, communication and persuasion have a fundamental role. Our findings provide insights to public authorities on how to manage people’s expectations in public health emergencies that require prolonged lockdown measures.

Compliance with COVID-19 Social-Distancing Measures in Italy: The Role of Expectations and Duration

10.3386/w27531

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.

Private Precaution and Public Restrictions: What Drives Social Distancing and Industry Foot Traffic in the COVID-19 Era?

10.3386/w27419

In the early phases of the COVID-19 epidemic labor markets exhibited considerable churn, which we relate to three primary findings. First, reopening policies generated asymmetrically large increases in reemployment of those out of work, compared to modest decreases in job loss among those employed. Second, most people who were reemployed appear to have returned to their previous employers, but the rate of reemployment decreases with time since job loss. Lastly, the groups that had the highest unemployment rates in April also tended to have the lowest reemployment rates, potentially making churn harmful to people and groups with more and/or longer job losses. Taken together, these estimates suggest that employment relationships are durable in the short run, but raise concerns that employment gains requiring new employment matches may not be as rapid and may be particularly slow for hard-hit groups including Hispanic and Black workers, youngest and oldest workers, and women.

Back to Business and (Re)employing Workers? Labor Market Activity During State COVID-19 Reopenings

10.3386/w27416

In sharp contrast to most previous crisis episodes, the Treasury market experienced severe stress and illiquidity during the COVID-19 crisis, raising concerns that the safe-haven status of U.S. Treasuries may be eroding. We document large shifts in Treasury ownership during this period and the accumulation of Treasury and reverse repo positions on dealer balance sheets. To understand the pricing consequences, we build a model in which balance sheet constraints of dealers and demand/supply shocks from habitat agents determine the term structure of Treasury yields. A novel element of our model is the inclusion of levered investors' repo financing as part of dealers' intermediation activities. Both direct holdings of Treasuries and reverse repo positions of dealers are subject to a regulatory balance sheet constraint. According to the model, Treasury inconvenience yields, measured as the spread between Treasuries and overnight-index swap (OIS) rates, as well as spreads between dealers' reverse repo and repo rates, should be increasing in dealers' balance sheet costs. Consistent with model predictions, we find that both spreads are large and positive during the COVID-19 crisis. We further show that the same model, adapted to the institutional setting in 2007-2009, also helps explain the opposite signs of repo spreads and Treasury convenience yields during the financial crisis.

Treasury Inconvenience Yields during the COVID-19 Crisis

10.3386/w27373

This paper provides a quick survey of results on the classic SIR model and variants allowing for heterogeneity in contact rates. It notes that calibrating the classic model to data generated by a heterogeneous model can lead to forecasts that are biased in several ways and to understatement of the forecast uncertainty. Among the biases are that we may underestimate how quickly herd immunity might be reached, underestimate differences across regions, and have biased estimates of the impact of endogenous and policy-driven social distancing.

Implications of Heterogeneous SIR Models for Analyses of COVID-19

10.3386/w27248

We use dynamic panel data models to generate density forecasts for daily Covid-19 infections for a panel of countries/regions. At the core of our model is a specification that assumes that the growth rate of active infections can be represented by autoregressive fluctuations around a downward sloping deterministic trend function with a break. Our fully Bayesian approach allows us to flexibly estimate the cross-sectional distribution of heterogeneous coefficients and then implicitly use this distribution as prior to construct Bayes forecasts for the individual time series. According to our model, there is a lot of uncertainty about the evolution of infection rates, due to parameter uncertainty and the realization of future shocks. We find that over a one-week horizon the empirical coverage frequency of our interval forecasts is close to the nominal credible level. Weekly forecasts from our model are published at https://laurayuliu.com/covid19-panel-forecast/.

Panel Forecasts of Country-Level Covid-19 Infections

10.3386/w27095

This paper takes an early look at the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a large and novel small business support program that was part of the initial policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We use new data on the distribution of the first round of PPP loans and high-frequency micro-level employment data to consider two dimensions of program targeting. First, we do not find evidence that funds flowed to areas more adversely affected by the economic effects of the pandemic, as measured by declines in hours worked or business shutdowns. If anything, funds flowed to areas less hard hit. Second, we find significant heterogeneity across banks in terms of disbursing PPP funds, which does not only reflect differences in underlying loan demand. The top-4 banks alone account for 36% of total pre-policy small business loans, but disbursed less than 3% of all PPP loans in the first round. Areas that were significantly more exposed to low-PPP banks received much lower loan allocations. We do not find evidence that the PPP had a substantial effect on local economic outcomes—including declines in hours worked, business shutdowns, initial unemployment insurance claims, and small business revenues—during the first round of the program. Firms appear to use first round funds to build up savings and meet loan and other commitments, which points to possible medium-run impacts. As data become available, we will continue to study employment and establishment responses to the program and the impact of PPP support on the economic recovery. Measuring these responses is critical for evaluating the social insurance value of the PPP and similar policies.

Did the Paycheck Protection Program Hit the Target?

10.3386/w27121

I use a simple SIR model, augmented to include deaths, to elucidate how pandemic progression is affected by the control of contagion, and examine the key trade-offs that underlie policy design. I illustrate how the cost of reducing the "reproduction number" R0 depends on how it changes the infection rate, the total and incremental number of deaths, the duration of the pandemic, and the possibility and impact of a second wave. Reducing R0 reduces the number of deaths, but extends the duration (and hence economic cost) of the pandemic, and it increases the fraction of the population still susceptible at the end, raising the possibility of a second wave. The benefit of reducing R0 is largely lives saved, and the incremental number of lives saved rises as R0 is reduced. But using a VSL estimate to value those lives is problematic.

COVID-19 and the Welfare Effects of Reducing Contagion

10.3386/w27417

We study the effects of COVID-19 coverage early in the pandemic by the two most widely-viewed cable news shows in the United States – Hannity and Tucker Carlson Tonight, both on Fox News – on downstream health outcomes. We first document large differences in content between the shows and in cautious behavior among viewers. Through both a selection-on-observables strategy and a novel instrumental variable approach, we find that areas with greater exposure to the show downplaying the threat of COVID-19 experienced a greater number of cases and deaths. We assess magnitudes through a simple epidemiological model highlighting the role of externalities and provide evidence that misinformation is a key underlying mechanism.

Misinformation During a Pandemic

10.3386/w27566

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 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.

Projecting Unemployment Durations: A Factor-Flows Simulation Approach With Application to the COVID-19 Recession

With government benefits set to expire at the end of July, new studies show that workers who were struggling financially before the pandemic face returning to jobs that require close personal contact.

How Remote Work Divides America

The Paycheck Protection Program has doled out billions in forgivable pandemic relief loans to businesses. Use this database to see where the money went.

Where did $380B in PPP money go?

Editor-in-Chief of the Lancet, Professor Richard Horton, gives his take on the UK's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID-19: Why has the UK response struggled? (w Professor Richard Horton)

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We explore the re­la­tion­ship between the spatial dis­tri­b­u­tions of excess deaths and care home fa­cil­i­ties during the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy. Using registry-​based mortality data (January 1st- March 31st, 2015-2020) for Lombardy, one of the areas hit most severely, we estimate that mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties with care homes present sig­nif­i­cantly higher excess death rates among the elderly (+41%). We find that this effect is not driven by the size of care homes and of the vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tion that they host. Rather, our results suggest that the excess deaths did not occur only within care homes and these fa­cil­i­ties acted as one of the possible catalysts in the diffusion of COVID-19 in the whole elderly pop­u­la­tion of their sur­round­ing territory.

Exploring the Re­la­tion­ship between Care Homes and Excess Deaths in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Italy

COVID-19 has uprooted many aspects of parents’ daily routines, from their jobs to their childcare arrange­ments. In this paper, we provide a novel de­scrip­tion of how parents in England living in two-​parent opposite-​gender families are spending their time under lockdown. We find that mothers’ paid work has taken a larger hit than that of fathers’, on both the extensive and intensive margins. We find that mothers are spending sub­stan­tially longer in childcare and housework than their partners and that they are spending a larger fraction of their paid work hours having to juggle work and childcare. Gender dif­fer­ences in the al­lo­ca­tion of domestic work cannot be straight­for­wardly explained by gender dif­fer­ences in em­ploy­ment rates or earnings. Very large gender asym­me­tries emerge when one partner has stopped working for pay during the crisis: mothers who have stopped working for pay do far more domestic work than fathers in the equiv­a­lent situation do.

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The Gendered Division of Paid and Domestic Work under Lockdown

We use the UK Household Lon­gi­tu­di­nal Study and compare pre- (2017-2019) and post-​COVID-19 data (April 2020) for the same group of in­di­vid­u­als to assess and quantify changes in mental health among ethnic groups in the UK. We confirm the pre­vi­ously doc­u­mented average de­te­ri­o­ra­tion in mental health for the whole sample of in­di­vid­u­als in­ter­viewed pre- and post-​COVID-19, and uncover four new facts. First, ethnicity predicts mental health de­te­ri­o­ra­tion when in­ter­acted with gender. Among men, BAME in­di­vid­u­als ex­pe­ri­ence a higher de­te­ri­o­ra­tion in mental health compared to British White in­di­vid­u­als. However, among women, the de­te­ri­o­ra­tion in mental health is similar for both BAME and British White in­di­vid­u­als. Second, the gender gap in mental health de­te­ri­o­ra­tion is only present among British White in­di­vid­u­als and not among BAME in­di­vid­u­als. Third, the drop in mental health among women and BAME men is very similar. Finally, there is sub­stan­tial het­ero­gene­ity across BAME groups. The BAME group of Bangladeshi, Indian and Pakistani appears to be driving the dif­fer­ence in the gender gap in mental health de­te­ri­o­ra­tion between British White and BAME in­di­vid­u­als. We call for ad­di­tional research on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic across different ethnic groups, and urge both policy makers and re­searchers to allocate resources to collect larger sample sizes of minority ethnic groups.

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COVID-19 and Mental Health De­te­ri­o­ra­tion among BAME Groups in the UK

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We use ad­min­is­tra­tive, survey, and online vacancy data to analyze the short-​term labor market impacts of the COVID-19 lockdown in Greece. We find that flows into un­em­ploy­ment have not increased; in fact, sep­a­ra­tions were lower than would have been expected given trends in recent years. At the same time, em­ploy­ment was about 12 percent lower at the end of June than it would have been without the pandemic. Our in­ter­rupted time series and difference-​in-differences estimates indicate that this was due to a dramatic slowdown in hiring during months when job creation typically peaks in normal years, mostly in tourism. While we do not formally test the reasons for these patterns, our analysis suggests that the measures in­tro­duced to mitigate the effects of the crisis in Greece have played an important role. These measures pro­hib­ited layoffs in in­dus­tries affected by the crisis and tied the major form of income support to the main­te­nance of em­ploy­ment re­la­tion­ships.

Reacting Quickly and Pro­tect­ing Jobs: The Short-​Term Impacts of the COVID-19 Lockdown on the Greek Labor Market

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The lockdown declared during the Spring 2020 because of the COVID-19 outbreak caused a re­al­lo­ca­tion of market and household work. A the same time school closures in many countries impacted on children’s lives and their learning process. In Italy, schools and nurseries have been closed during three months and the incidence and quality of distant learning ac­tiv­i­ties has been hetero-​geneous over education levels and among schools. Using a real time survey data collected in April 2020 on children’s wellbeing, and parents’ market and household work, we estimate how the re­al­lo­ca­tion of intra-​household re­spon­si­bil­i­ties during the lock-down has affected children’s use of time, their emotional status and their home learning. We find that changes in the parental division of household tasks and childcare are mostly due to the labor market re­stric­tions imposed during the lockdown and that this re­al­lo­ca­tion increases fathers in­volve­ment in childcare and home­school­ing. This positive variation in fathers in­volve­ment is ac­com­pa­nied by an increase in children’s emotional wellbeing while the quality of children’s home learning is mostly de­ter­mined by distant learning ac­tiv­i­ties proposed by their teachers.

Fathers Matter: Intra-​Household Re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and Children’s Wellbeing during the COVID-19 Lockdown in Italy

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No matter the cause, re­ces­sions are usually ac­com­pa­nied by some com­bi­na­tion of job loss, hiring freezes, wage cuts or hours re­duc­tions. In a rapidly evolving economic crisis there is a need for timely in­for­ma­tion to assess labour market per­for­mance and develop strate­gies to address the problems that emerge. Household labour force surveys are not point-​in-time data, but do offer the op­por­tu­nity to analyse a broader range of outcomes not readily available in ad­min­is­tra­tive data. They can also be utilised at higher fre­quen­cies than is normally as­so­ci­ated with them. In what follows, the weekly in­for­ma­tion contained in the UK Labour Force Survey is tracked for several labour market outcomes from the first week of 2020 and onward as the Covid-19 crisis developed in spring 2020. The in­di­ca­tors are presented in “excess” form to gauge how far the 2020 incidence of a par­tic­u­lar outcome differs from its weekly norm. It seems that the most common metrics of labour market per­for­mance, like un­em­ploy­ment or wage rates, show little departure from recent norms over the first few months of the crisis. The initial margins of ad­just­ment were instead some cu­mu­la­tive 50 million more weekly workplace absences than usual during lockdown, notable hours re­duc­tions of up to 25% among the majority who carried on working, together equiv­a­lent to around 3 weeks of lost working for the whole workforce, allied to a notable stalling of hiring that had already begun several weeks before lockdown.

Labour Markets in the Time of Coro­n­avirus: Measuring Excess

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This paper analyses several di­men­sions of workers’ safety that are relevant in the context of a pandemic. We provide a clas­si­fi­ca­tion of oc­cu­pa­tions according to the risk of contagion: by con­sid­er­ing a wider range of job char­ac­ter­is­tics and a more nuanced as­sess­ment of infection risk, we expand on the previous lit­er­a­ture that almost ex­clu­sively looked at fea­si­bil­ity of working from home. We apply our clas­si­fi­ca­tion to the United States and to European countries and we find that roughly 50% of jobs in our sample can be con­sid­ered safe, although a large cross-​country variation exists, notably in the potential incidence of remote working. We find that the most eco­nom­i­cally vul­ner­a­ble workers (low-​educated, low-wage workers, im­mi­grants, workers on temporary contracts, and part-​timers) are over-​represented in unsafe jobs, notably in non-​essential ac­tiv­i­ties. We assess the nature of the re­al­lo­ca­tion of workers from unsafe to safe jobs that is likely to take place in the years to come, and the policies that could mitigate the social cost of this re­al­lo­ca­tion.

The New Hazardous Jobs and Worker Re­al­lo­ca­tion

Come August, hundreds of universities across the United States are poised to reopen their campuses with a mix of online and in-person courses. Only a handful are aiming for an entirely online semester. But as the machinery of higher education cranks back into action, faculty, staff, and students are voicing concerns that, with COVID-19 cases surging in many parts of the country, employees are being forced to put their health—and the health of others—at unnecessary risk. At many universities, employees will not be permitted to teach or work from home unless—due to age or preexisting health conditions—they’re at risk of a severe outcome from COVID-19. The need to care for children and fear of infection aren’t valid reasons to work remotely, according to some universities. “Employees who care for or live with [high-risk] individuals … should plan to return to campus as scheduled,” the Georgia Institute of Technology’s (Georgia Tech’s) reopening guidelines stated as of 20 July. Academics across the country are dismayed. At Pennsylvania State University (Penn State), for instance, faculty published an open letter decrying the “limited amount of input faculty, staff, and graduate employees have had on decisions related to our safety.” At Georgia Tech, faculty released a similar letter saying the university’s reopening procedures “do not follow science-based evidence”—and that “no faculty, staff, or student should be coerced into risking their health and the health of their families by working … on campus when there is a remote/online equivalent.”

‘Ethically troubling.’ University reopening plans put professors, students on edge

As Amazon thrives under Covid-19, critics say its founder’s wealth – he could buy the UK’s four big banks – is ‘obscene’

Jeff Bezos, the world's richest man, added £10bn to his fortune in just one day

10.31235/osf.io/jqwyr

This paper provides some estimates of early scientific mobilization regarding COVIDー19, as represented in PubMed, through Mar 18. We find that things look similarly coordinated--as you would hope and might expect in an emerging crisis--to our previous analysis of early HIV research.

What Role Does Collaboration have in Responding to COVID-19?

10.31235/osf.io/bgpk3

In the United States, widespread hostility towards Asian-Americans has unfortunately seemed to define a large component of Americans' response to the Coronavirus pandemic. Utilizing Google Trends data, I examine how sentiment towards minority racial groups has been affected by the Coronavirus pandemic. I find strong evidence that Coronavirus had caused an increase in anti-Chinese sentiment, but surprisingly I find that it has caused an even greater increase in anti-Hispanic sentiment. I discuss why this may be and also present evidence that Coronavirus has resulted in discrimination towards Chinese and Mexican restaurants.

Initial Effects of the Coronavirus Pandemic on Racial Prejudice in the United States: Evidence from Google Trends