National Bureau of Economic Research
Coronavirus Pandemic Research
Tracking the COVID-19 Economy in Real Time
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to unprecedented fiscal actions in many nations, as governments have increased spending and provided tax relief to firms and households during a period of economic shutdown. Even after the pandemic recedes, its fiscal effects will continue, since most countries will face higher debt burdens as a result of their expansionary fiscal policies and the path of economic activity will take time to return to its pre-pandemic track. Gita Gopinath, the Economic Counsellor and Director of the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund, on leave from her role as an NBER research associate, summarized the fiscal impact of COVID-19 on both developed and developing nations in a plenary address at the NBER's Tax Policy and the Economy meeting in late September. Her presentation may be viewed in the video below. An archive of NBER videos on pandemic-related topics may be found here.
Five NBER working papers distributed this week investigate the COVID-19 pandemic, its economic effects, and the public health and economic responses to it. One study analyzes consumer spending responses in the first few months of the pandemic (27988). Two assess macroeconomic consequences, one by developing a theoretical model that emphasizes sectoral shocks and adjustment frictions (27992), the other by reviewing the wide range of policy interventions around the world to assess key tradeoffs associated with the pandemic (28004). Another study finds that Chinese firms that are part of industrial clusters rebounded from the pandemic faster than those that were not (28000). The last paper outlines a plan for measuring the effects of the Affordable Care Act on pandemic-related health outcomes (27999).
More than 280 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 Like all NBER papers, they are circulated for discussion and comment, and have not been peer-reviewed. They may be viewed in reverse chronological order or by topic area.
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Featured Working Papers
Alexandr Kopytov, Nikolai Roussanov, and Mathieu Taschereau-Dumouchel find that the decline in price of recreational goods and services over the past century is strongly related to the steady decline in hours worked.
A study of Texas data by Benjamin Feigenberg and Conrad Miller finds that police search Black and Hispanic motorists more often than White motorists, but do not find more contraband, which implies that troopers could equalize search rates across racial groups, maintain the status quo search rate, and increase contraband yield.
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, government policy effectively countered its effects on incomes, leading poverty to fall and some incomes to rise across a range of demographic groups and geographies, an analysis by Jeehoon Han, Bruce D. Meyer, and James X. Sullivan shows.
Because the Affordable Care Act subsidies for contraceptives mainly benefited higher socioeconomic groups, the composition of mothers shifted towards less-advantaged groups, where Jie Ma and Kosali I. Simon find evidence of direct improvements in prenatal care and pregnancy-related health.
While the Earned Income Tax Credit expansions has increased maternal labor supply, it has not reduced the time mothers devote to active learning and development activities with their children, Jacob Bastian and Lance Lochner report.
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