National Bureau of Economic Research

Conducting and disseminating non-partisan economic research

Coronavirus Pandemic Research

Calculating the Total Economic and Health Cost of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused more than 240,000 deaths in the United States, a sharp decline in economic activity, anxiety and depression for many individuals, and difficult-to-predict long-term health costs for those who survive serious infections. NBER Research Associates David Cutler and Lawrence Summers of Harvard University translate all of these consequences into economic terms. Their calculations use estimates of the value of a statistical life that federal agencies apply in cost-benefit analysis, as well as estimates of the economic costs of anxiety. Their findings suggest a total cost of roughly $16 trillion, more than three quarters of annual gross domestic product. Cutler describes these results in the video below. An archive of NBER videos on pandemic-related topics may be found here.

 

Seven NBER working papers distributed this week investigate the economic and health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the policy responses to it. Two studies examine the effects of the pandemic on labor markets, one focusing on the US (28083) and the other on China (28072). Two more analyze trade-offs in pandemic-response policy design, one with respect to vaccines (28085) and the other with respect to masks, testing, and other transmission-reduction strategies (28093). Another pair of studies investigate aspects of corporate borrowing and financial policy, one assessing the effects of the Federal Reserve’s corporate bond buying (28097) and the other analyzing the increase to date in, and the prospects for, corporate bankruptcies (28104). The final study explores the integration of recent research on the determinants of well-being into a framework for responding to the virus (28095).

More than 300 NBER working papers have presented pandemic-related research. These papers are open access and have been collected for easy reference. Like all NBER papers, they are circulated for discussion and comment, and have not been peer-reviewedThey may be viewed in reverse chronological order or by topic area.


New Working Group on Race and Stratification in the Economy Launched

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The NBER has launched a Working Group on Race and Stratification in the Economy to explore, document, anddisseminate research on the causes and consequences of racial disparities in economic outcomes, and tostimulate research on race in all aspects of economic analysis. Research Associate Trevon Logan, the Hazel C.Youngberg Distinguished Professor of Economics at The Ohio State University, will serve as the inaugural director. The group will meet twice each year, beginning with a virtual meeting in April 2021.

The working group will take a broad approach to the economics of race, considering the factors that contribute to racial differences in income, wealth, housing, educational attainment, labor market outcomes, economic mobility, and a range of other measures. It will explore economic models of discrimination and social stratification, as well as insights on these issues from other social sciences, and will consider the role of public policies and political institutions in contributing to, and ameliorating, racial differences. More broadly, it will encourage new approaches to economic analysis of race in a variety of settings.

The NBER also has created a new post-doctoral fellowship that will support a year of research by an early-career scholar who is a member of a historically under-represented group in the economics profession, or who is studying issues of diversity in the profession. Further Information may be found at:

https://www.nber.org/call-applications-post-doctoral-fellowship-promote-diversity-economics-profession


From the NBER Digest

...a free monthly publication of non-technical summaries of research on topics of broad public interest

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Survey data from England show individuals in their 60s and 70s underestimate their likelihood of living to old ages, which could account for limited annuity demand. On reaching retirement, individuals must decide how best to use their savings to provide for the remaining years of their lives. This problem is complicated in part because they do not know to what age they will live. Buying an annuity provides insurance against the possibility of living a longer-than-...

From the Bulletin on Health

...a free summary of recent NBER Working Papers on health topics, distributed three times a year

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Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive disease of the brain that is the leading cause of dementia in the United States, afflicting an estimated five million Americans. As shown in the figure, the prevalence, costs, and human toll of this disease are vast, and expected to increase over time. Given these sobering statistics, Alzheimer’s disease is a critical priority for research and public policy in the United States. In order to encourage new economic research on this...

From the NBER Reporter

...a presentation of the 2020 Martin S. Feldstein Lecture

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Author(s): Claudia Goldin
My talk will take us on a Journey across a Century of Women — a 120-year odyssey of generations of college-graduate women from a time when they were only able to have either a family or a career (sometimes a job), to now, when they anticipate having both a family and a career. More women than ever before are within striking distance of these goals. Fully 45 percent of young American women today will eventually have a BA degree, and more than 20 percent of them will obtain...

From the Bulletin on Retirement and Disability

...a free quarterly summarizing research in the NBER's Retirement and Disability Research Center

The 2020 NBER Summer Institute's Economics of Social Security meeting featured a panel discussion on the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for Social Security in the US. NBER President James Poterba introduced the panel by noting that COVID-19 may affect Social Security in many ways, including effects on the economy, health, and mortality, while also acknowledging the current early state of research with respect to the pandemic and its long-term effects. James Stock (...
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Facing rising life expectancies and falling birth rates, many countries have raised retirement ages in their public pension programs to ameliorate long-run fiscal deficits. In the US, the normal retirement age has gradually been rising from age 65 and will reach age 67 for those born in 1960 or later. Public pension retirement ages — including the early retirement age (ERA) when benefits are first available and the normal retirement age (NRA) around which the benefit...

Featured Working Papers

Americans hearing news about the Federal Reserve’s new strategy of average inflation targeting are no more likely to correctly identify the new strategy than others, nor are their expectations different, Olivier Coibion, Yuriy Gorodnichenko, Edward S. Knotek II, and Raphael Schoenle find.

Greek firms that participated in a government program exempting them from audits if their profit margins were above target levels reported taxable profit increases of up to 70 percent over pre-program levels, Yazan Al-Karablieh, Evangelos Koumanakos, and Stefanie Stantcheva find.

After Texas reinstated affirmative action for college admissions, racial gaps in SAT scores, grades, attendance, and college applications declined, Mitra Akhtari, Natalie Bau, and Jean-William P. Laliberté find.

Immigrants act more as "job creators" than "job takers," and non-US-born founders play outsized roles in US high-growth entrepreneurship, according to a study by Pierre Azoulay, Benjamin Jones, J. Daniel Kim, and Javier Miranda.

Matching natural gas shale royalty payments with credit bureau data for 215,639 consumers, J. Anthony Cookson, Erik P. Gilje, and Rawley Z. Heimer estimate that those who receive such payments repay about 33 cents of debt per dollar of windfall.

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Interviews

NBER researchers discuss their work on subjects of wide interest to economists, policymakers, and the general public. Recordings of more-detailed presentations, keynote addresses, and panel discussions at NBER conferences are available on the Lectures page.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has caused more than 240,000 deaths in the United States, a sharp decline in economic activity,...
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Nursing home residents account for more than 35 percent of deaths from COVID-19 in the United States. NBER Research...
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The COVID-19 pandemic has led to unprecedented fiscal actions in many nations, as governments have increased spending...
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The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a particularly heavy toll on the elderly in the United States and other nations,...
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The speed and geographic variation of the COVID-19 economic decline has placed a premium on higher-frequency...
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