Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists
Viral Acharya talks to Tim Phillips about estimating the value of a COVID-19 cure using the behaviour of stock prices and a novel vaccine progress indicator. The value of a cure is worth between 5% and 15% of wealth and rises substantially with uncertainty surrounding the frequency and duration of the pandemic.
You can read the Covid economics Paper discussed, here: Covid Economics 61: 1–72.
Can private expenditures recover once social distancing restrictions are lifted or will the COVID-19 crisis have a sustained impact on consumer confidence, preferences, and, hence, spending? Steffi Huber (University of Amsterdam) talks to Tim Phillips
You can download Steffi's paper for free from CEPR is issue 59 of Covid Economics Papers: 'Is COVID-19 a consumption game changer? Evidence from a large-scale multi-country survey' (Alexander Hodbod, Cars Hommes, Stefanie J. Huber and Isabelle Salle) cepr.online/CE59
In his Covid Economics paper [Issue 59, Paper 4] , Difang Huang (Monash University) uses data from the United States to show that social distancing lowered the average daily infection cases by 12%, and provides evidence that the effects are heterogeneous in an individual's income, race, education, and political belief. Here he discusses these findings with CEPR's Tim Phillips. You can find his paper here: https://cepr.org/content/covid-economics-vetted-and-real-time-papers-
In Tim Phillip's last interview of 2020 for CEPR, he joins CEPR President Beatrice Weder di Mauro and Charles Wyplosz, editor of CEPR's influential Covid Economics Paper series, to look back at what has been an extraordinary year, both for CEPR and for the world in general.
Humberto Laudares ( Graduate Institute & University of Geneva) reveals a positive & statistically significant relationship between deforestation & the transmission of COVID19 in indigenous communities in Brazil. With intensified Mining & Conflict contributing to the spread. Read the paper discussed in this video in Issue 53 of CEPR's Covid Economics Papers
What kind of message is most effective when trying to persuade communities to support vaccination drives? Nicholas Duquette talks to Tim Phillips about the results of a survey experiment which reveal divergent responses between white non-Hispanic respondents and non-white or Hispanic respondents, depending on whether the message emphasises either the risks of the virus or the safety of vaccination, to the respondent personally or to others
You can read the Covid Economics paper which details Nic's work, '“Heard” immunity: Messages emphasizing the safety of others increase intended uptake of a COVID-19 vaccine in some groups', here:
Once a safe COVID-19 vaccine will become available, there will not be enough supply of it to vaccinate the entire population. Policy makers at national and international level are currently developing vaccine prioritization strategies. However, it is important that these strategies have sufficient levels of public support. Sandy Tubeuf (UC Louvain) discusses her work on how people perceive priority cases for vaccination. Read the Covid Economics paper behind this discussion: Who should get it first? Public preferences for distributing a COVID-19 vaccine by Jeroen Luyten, Sandy Tubeuf , Roselinde Kessels
What are the political costs of mismanaging a Pandemic? Loose pandemic policies are politically costly - governments that placed more weight on health rather than short-term economic outcomes obtained higher approval. Cristoph Trebesch (Kiel Institute for the World Economy, CEPR) talks to Tim Phillips about the findings in his recent Covid Economics paper: Corona politics: The cost of mismanaging pandemics Helios Herrera, Maximilian Konradt, Guillermo Ordoñez and Christoph Trebesch, Covid Economics #50
Over the past decades, many developed countries have experienced considerable increases in income and wealth inequality, led by an extraordinary concentration among the very richest swath of households. This has focused policy attention on the superrich. Various political and economic arguments for at least partially offsetting this rise in inequality have been put forward.
In this video from the UBS Center, Florian Scheuer presents ideas from a new paper that provides an overview of the tax situation the superrich currently face and evaluates various reform proposals.
Florian Scheuer has also co-authored a CEPR Discussion Paper on the subject with Joel Slemrod: DP13962 Taxation and the Superrich
Conventional wisdom has it that banks play a special role in providing liquidity in bad times, while capital markets are used to fund investment in good times. Olivier Darmouni tells Tim Phillips how, using micro-data on corporate balance sheets following the COVID-19 shock, he finds evidence that instead, the corporate bond market is central to firms' access to liquidity, crowding out bank loans even when the banking sector is healthy. This liquidity-driven bond issuance questions the comparative advantage of banks in liquidity provision, and suggests that the V-shaped recovery of bond markets, propelled by the Federal Reserve, is unlikely to lead to a V-shaped recovery in real activity.
Read the underlying paper, Crowding Out Bank Loans: Liquidity Driven Bond Issuance by Olivier Darmouni and Kerry Y. Siani, which, which appeared in issue 51 of CEPR's Covid Economics series, here.