National Bureau of Economic Research

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act of 2020 provided funding to hospitals to support pandemic-related expenses and to make up for lost revenue from non-COVID care that could not be delivered on account of the pandemic.  Funds were allocated to health care facilities based on their prior revenue, their location, the insurance status of the population they typically serve, and their number of COVID-19 hospitalizations.  NBER Researchers Amitabh Chandra of Harvard and Senhil Mullainathan of the University of Chicago, along with Pragya Kakani of Harvard and Ziad Obermeyer of the University of California, Berkeley, studied the allocation of CARES Act funding across hospitals in counties with different racial composition.  Their findings, published in JAMA, suggest that conditional on their level of funding, the COVID-related needs of hospitals in counties with a high share of Black residents were greater than those of hospitals in other counties.  The disparities were greatest for counties with a high level of per capita CARES Act funding.  In the video below, Mullainathan explains their findings and the source of this disparity -- Black patients typically receive less treatment, and therefore generate lower hospital revenues, for a given diagnosis.  An archive of NBER videos on pandemic-related topics may be found here.

Six NBER working papers distributed this week investigate the COVID-19 pandemic’s economic and health consequences, or the impact of public policies designed to respond to the pandemic. One reports that “deaths of despair” among working-age men have risen during the pandemic, contributing to excess mortality (28303). A second draws on past experience to assess the long-term impact of pandemic-related unemployment on life expectancy (28304). A third examines the role of measurement error and survey bias in US unemployment statistics, with particular attention to the unemployment spike following the COVID-19 outbreak (28310). Another analyzes cross-national data and finds that the pandemic-related death toll has been smaller in nations that experienced deep human and economic losses in World War II, perhaps because of societal preparedness to respond to large shocks (28291). A fifth study summarizes the potential role of debt standstills in alleviating sovereign debt burdens that have been heightened by the pandemic (28292). The last study tracks household responses to a universal government grant in Israel in August 2020, finding that many recipients paid off debt or gave the grant to someone who they regarded as in greater need (28312).

More than 340 NBER working papers have addressed various aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic. 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. View them in reverse chronological order or by topic area.

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President-elect Biden has nominated Cecilia Rouse, a member of the NBER Board of Directors and an NBER research associate from 1992 until 2014, to chair the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA). Rouse is the dean of Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs and the Lawrence and Shirley Katzman and Lewis and Anna Ernst Professor in the Economics of Education. An expert on labor economics and education, Rouse was affiliated with three NBER programs – Children, Economics of Education, and Labor Studies – prior to becoming Princeton’s representative on the Board of Directors. 

Rouse has served in Washington twice before, as a member of the CEA between 2009 and 2011, and as a staff member at the National Economic Council between 1998 and 1999. She received both her AB and her PhD in economics from Harvard University. She has spent her entire academic career at Princeton.

If confirmed, Rouse will be the 15th current or former NBER research associate to serve as CEA chair since Arthur Burns was tapped for this role by President Eisenhower in 1953.

The NBER has launched a Working Group on Race and Stratification in the Economy to explore, document, and disseminate research on the causes and consequences of racial disparities in economic outcomes, and to stimulate 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.

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