Hybrid journal (It can contain Open Access articles) ISSN (Print) 0266-4658 - ISSN (Online) 1468-0327 Published by Oxford University Press[419 journals]
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Pages: 1 - 3 Abstract: The Covid outbreak in 2019 marked the start of the biggest epidemic since the Spanish Flu exactly one century prior. It constitutes a major public health disaster that quickly triggered an important economic crisis as well. Countries, firms and population had to adapt to the situation, changing the basic organization of life and production. The crisis affected so many aspects of life that two special issues of Economic Policy are not enough to cover its full extent. The first special issue starts with a microeconomic approach of the crisis, focusing first on the effectiveness of some of the measures that were set in place to control the epidemic, but also on other aspects of the crisis such as its effect on mental health and on short-run inequality. PubDate: Tue, 24 May 2022 00:00:00 GMT DOI: 10.1093/epolic/eiac019 Issue No:Vol. 37, No. 109 (2022)
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Authors:Stantcheva S. Pages: 5 - 41 Abstract: AbstractThis paper summarizes some of the major inequalities that have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and discusses avenues for policy intervention over the medium and long runs. PubDate: Fri, 15 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMT DOI: 10.1093/epolic/eiac006 Issue No:Vol. 37, No. 109 (2022)
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Authors:Chapelle G. Pages: 43 - 81 Abstract: AbstractThis paper uses a difference-in-differences (DID) framework to estimate the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) used to fight the 1918 influenza pandemic and control the resultant mortality in 43 US cities. The results suggest that NPIs such as school closures and social distancing, as implemented in 1918, and when applied relatively intensively, might have reduced individual and herd immunity reducing the life expectancy of people with co morbidity, thereby leading to a significantly higher number of deaths in subsequent years. It would be difficult to draw any inference regarding the predicted impact of NPIs as implemented during the Covid-19 crisis as influenza and Covid-19 are two entirely different viruses and nowadays’ pharmaceutical technologies can limit these medium-term impacts. PubDate: Tue, 11 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMT DOI: 10.1093/epolic/eiac003 Issue No:Vol. 37, No. 109 (2022)
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Authors:Hornung E. Pages: 83 - 84 Abstract: In the absence of safe and effective vaccines, should we attempt to contain pandemics or not' The answer to this question obviously depends on various considerations. Next to the immediate consequences of a raging pandemic, we may need to consider consequences that occur in the longer run. Thus, one of the trade-offs policy-makers are confronted with is between low mortality rates today or potentially better immune responses in the future. PubDate: Tue, 24 May 2022 00:00:00 GMT DOI: 10.1093/epolic/eiac015 Issue No:Vol. 37, No. 109 (2022)
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Pages: 85 - 85 Abstract: Guillaume Chapelle first addressed some of the comments by Claire Lim. He explained that the geographical location of a city represents a key predictor of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). He also agreed that it may be interesting to run a regression to understand the explanatory power of demographics and geography on NPIs. He further argued that in the paper he controlled for geography by means of dummy variables, which already dispense with the linearity assumption, so that he had partially addressed the question of non-linearities. He added that when it comes to demographics, he tried to look at working age group variation in order to address non-linearities, but that it may be interesting to delve further into this, maybe by using age bins. However, he noted that in some preliminary analysis, he did not find any relevant heterogeneity with respect to age. He also pointed out that the paper explains how the influenza gave birth to many different strains that were dominant up to 1979, but he also argued that there is not much that can be done as a robustness check as there is no clear data on the strains and little biological evidence on the different strains in successive years across cities. When it comes to the possible implications for current policy, he explained that one key takeaway is that a possible risk is that people may stop getting vaccinated and then get hit by subsequent variants of the virus. Hence, he argued that it is important to keep convincing people to get vaccinated regularly. PubDate: Tue, 24 May 2022 00:00:00 GMT DOI: 10.1093/epolic/eiac020 Issue No:Vol. 37, No. 109 (2022)
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Authors:von Bismarck-Osten C; Borusyak K, Schönberg U. Pages: 87 - 130 Abstract: AbstractThis paper considers the role of school closures in the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. To isolate the impact of the closures from other containment measures and identify a causal effect, we exploit variation in the start and end dates of the summer and fall school holidays across the 16 federal states in Germany using a difference-in-differences design with staggered adoption. We show that neither the summer closures nor the closures in the fall had a significant containing effect on the spread of SARS-CoV-2 among children or a spill-over effect on older generations. There is also no evidence that the return to school at full capacity after the summer holidays increased infections among children or adults. Instead, we find that the number of children infected increased during the last weeks of the summer holiday and decreased in the first weeks after schools reopened, a pattern we attribute to travel returnees. PubDate: Wed, 12 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMT DOI: 10.1093/epolic/eiac001 Issue No:Vol. 37, No. 109 (2022)
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Authors:Fack G. Pages: 131 - 131 Abstract: Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, school closures have extensively been used by governments as a containment measure to guard against the spread of the virus. On average, countries have experienced 40 weeks of partial or complete school closure during the first 2 years of the pandemic.11 It is therefore very important to weigh the public health benefits of school closures against their negative effects, both for children and their parents. The impact of school closures on the transmission of the virus is however, difficult to establish as these closures are usually implemented along with other containment measures. This paper exploits the regional variation in the dates of summer and autumn school holidays across Germany in 2020 as a natural experiment to disentangle the effect of school closures from the effects of other measures. This quasi-experimental variation provides a credible estimation strategy and findings are reassuring, as they suggest that school closure and reopening did not have a significant impact on the spread of the virus. PubDate: Tue, 24 May 2022 00:00:00 GMT DOI: 10.1093/epolic/eiac025 Issue No:Vol. 37, No. 109 (2022)
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Authors:Roulet A. Pages: 133 - 134 Abstract: This paper shows that in Germany, schools played a limited role in the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 over the summer and fall of 2020. This finding is consistent with contemporaneous work by Isphording et al. (2021) which also looks at the effect of school closures on the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Germany in 2020. The paper being discussed here shows an increase in cases just before school re-openings at the end of the summer, probably due to returns from travels. It also highlights that the puzzling finding in Isphording et al. (2021) of a fall in infections after schools re-opened was driven by two states which experienced differential pre-trends. PubDate: Tue, 24 May 2022 00:00:00 GMT DOI: 10.1093/epolic/eiac012 Issue No:Vol. 37, No. 109 (2022)
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Pages: 135 - 137 Abstract: Guillaume Chapelle asked whether infection rates represent a relevant measure, since there can be very similar mortality levels for very different infection rates over time. Hence, testing may be an unreliable measure, particularly given that in Germany tests are quite expensive so that people may be reluctant to get tested. He hence suggested that it may be useful to also use mortality rates as a measure. Uta Schoenberg replied and said that she believes infection rates are an informative measure, but she agrees that it may be interesting to also look at mortality. In fact, she said that the authors had also looked at mortality rates and found results in line with those obtained by looking at infection rates. PubDate: Tue, 24 May 2022 00:00:00 GMT DOI: 10.1093/epolic/eiac021 Issue No:Vol. 37, No. 109 (2022)
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Authors:Adams-Prassl A; Boneva T, Golin M, et al. Pages: 139 - 155 Abstract: AbstractThe coronavirus outbreak has caused significant disruptions to people’s lives. We exploit variation in lockdown measures across states to document the impact of stay-at-home orders on mental health using real-time survey data in the United States. We find that the lockdown measures lowered mental health by 0.083 standard deviations. This large negative effect is entirely driven by women. As a result of the lockdown measures, the existing gender gap in mental health has increased by 61%. The negative effect on women’s mental health cannot be explained by an increase in financial worries or caring responsibilities. PubDate: Sun, 09 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMT DOI: 10.1093/epolic/eiac002 Issue No:Vol. 37, No. 109 (2022)
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Authors:Pinotti P. Pages: 157 - 158 Abstract: In 2020, for the first time in history, entire countries underwent prolonged periods of stay-at-home orders, school closures and curfews. These policies contributed stress and disruption on top of the anxiety caused by the pandemic. Although most of us have experimented with these effects during the last two years, it remains difficult to precisely quantify them in the absence of systematic data on mental health. PubDate: Tue, 24 May 2022 00:00:00 GMT DOI: 10.1093/epolic/eiac013 Issue No:Vol. 37, No. 109 (2022)
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Authors:Roth C. Pages: 159 - 160 Abstract: This paper covers an incredibly important current issue that has important relevance for current policymakers. In particular, the paper asks how the Coronavirus Lockdown affected mental health during the early phases of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. The key finding of the paper is that women’s mental health is more negatively affected by the lockdowns compared with men. The authors shed light on a series of mechanisms and thoroughly discuss potential mechanisms that could be underlying the effects, including different childcare duties or financial scarcity. PubDate: Tue, 24 May 2022 00:00:00 GMT DOI: 10.1093/epolic/eiac014 Issue No:Vol. 37, No. 109 (2022)
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Pages: 161 - 163 Abstract: Marta Golin replied to the points raised by the discussants and to the questions in the discussion. She first clarified that the surveys on which the sample is based were conducted through online professional survey companies. Moreover, she noted that the characteristics of the individuals in the sample are slightly different from those in the US population and in particular that women and young people are overrepresented, probably because of the particular way in which data were collected, that is, online surveys. She also agreed that it would be interesting to look specifically at the effects of lockdowns on students and retired people’s mental health, but argued that there are not enough respondents belonging to these categories in the sample. PubDate: Tue, 24 May 2022 00:00:00 GMT DOI: 10.1093/epolic/eiac022 Issue No:Vol. 37, No. 109 (2022)
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Authors:Aspachs O; Durante R, Graziano A, et al. Pages: 165 - 199 Abstract: SUMMARYG. Montalvo and Marta Reynal-Querol'>Official statistics on economic inequality are only available at low frequency and with considerable delay. This makes it challenging to assess the impact on inequality of fast-unfolding crises like the COVID-19 pandemic, and to rapidly evaluate and tailor policy responses. We propose a new methodology to track income inequality at high frequency using anonymized data from bank records for over three million account holders in Spain. Using this approach, we analyse how inequality evolved between February and November 2020 (compared to the same months of 2019). We first show that the wage distribution in our data matches very closely that from official labour surveys. We then document that, in the absence of government intervention, inequality would have increased dramatically, mainly due to job losses and wage cuts experienced by low-wage workers. The increase in pre-transfer inequality was especially pronounced among the young and the foreign-born, and in regions more dependent on services. Public transfers and unemployment insurance schemes were effective at providing a safety net to the most affected segments of the population and at offsetting most of the increase in inequality. Increased inequality is primarily driven by differential changes in employment rate. Indeed, using individual-level regressions, we find that, over the course of the pandemic, the probability of being employed decreased drastically for workers in the lower part of the pre-COVID wage distribution, young cohorts and foreign-born. PubDate: Sat, 12 Feb 2022 00:00:00 GMT DOI: 10.1093/epolic/eiac008 Issue No:Vol. 37, No. 109 (2022)
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Authors:Fetzer T. Pages: 201 - 203 Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic led to an unprecedented economic policy response across much of the world. A broad range of conventional and unconventional economic policy instruments were deployed and the research community will spend the next years parsing through the wealth of research questions that can be studied through the data generated by these policy interventions. The present paper is a nice illustration of the type of research that can be carried out in a real-time fashion. It is the first and foremost a cleanly executed descriptive analysis leveraging confidential micro data from one of Spain’s largest banks. Motivated by concerns about COVID-19’s impact on inequality, it suggests that the significant expansion of government transfers mostly offset income losses that arose due to the public health crisis. The authors carefully document how the fiscal response in Spain notably limited the first-order negative impacts on income and, to a significant extent, on inequalities in particular among the young, foreign-born and individuals residing in regions dependent on tourism. While a lot of important auxiliary questions cannot be studied with the data available, for example, on the extent to which the fiscal support measures interact with highly dual labour markets—due to the lack of auxiliary information on the individual bank account holders, it nevertheless provides a glimpse of the type of work that private data enable researchers to carry out in the future. This, however, raises questions going beyond this particular contribution. PubDate: Tue, 24 May 2022 00:00:00 GMT DOI: 10.1093/epolic/eiac016 Issue No:Vol. 37, No. 109 (2022)
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Pages: 205 - 210 Abstract: In the discussion, Libertad González asked about the main types of government transfers driving the results in the paper. Ruben Durante responded explaining that in the data it is not possible to distinguish between different types of transfers, as these are all paid by the same entity. However, he specified that the data considered include unemployment benefits and furlough schemes. PubDate: Tue, 24 May 2022 00:00:00 GMT DOI: 10.1093/epolic/eiac023 Issue No:Vol. 37, No. 109 (2022)
Hybrid journal (It can contain Open Access articles)
[419 journals]
