National Bureau of 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 Like all NBER papers, they are circulated for discussion and comment, and have not been peer-reviewed. They may be viewed in reverse chronological order or by topic area.
New Working Group on Race and Stratification in the Economy Launched
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
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...a presentation of the 2020 Martin S. Feldstein Lecture
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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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