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:
Video Vox
Nicolas Duquette 10 December 2020
Sandy Tubeuf 02 December 2020
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
Christoph Trebesch 26 November 2020
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
Florian Scheuer 19 November 2020
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
Olivier Darmouni 17 November 2020
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.
Kenneth Lee 04 November 2020
On March 24, 2020, India's Prime Minister announced the world's largest COVID-19 lockdown, bringing to a near-halt the economic and social lives of more than one billion Indian residents. Ken Lee talks to Tim Phillips about his work on the economic impacts and behavioural changes induced by this unprecedented policy using two unique data sources: Facebook mobility data and a representative sample of previously surveyed low income Delhi households.
Read the underlying CEPR Covid Economics paper: Job loss and behavioral change: The unprecedented effects of the India lockdown in Delhi by Kenneth Lee, Harshil Sahai, Patrick Baylis and Michael Greenstone
Diane Coyle 03 November 2020
The unprecedented crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic has prompted a spontaneous collective effort by the economics profession to contribute both to the immediate policy response to the shock, and also to the debate about the character of the subsequent recovery.
Read Diane's paper in Covid Economics Issue 48
William Cook 21 October 2020
Though it is recognized that pupils whose schooling is being disrupted by Covid-19 are suffering immediate learning loss, there exists a lack of understanding as to how this disruption might affect longer-term educational outcomes. Will Cook (Manchester Metropolitan University) examines the effect of school disruption in England due to restrictions put in place to manage the Foot and Mouth Disease epidemic in cattle in 2001 and analyzes whether primary schools that had been significantly disrupted by the epidemic experienced lower performance in standardized tests for pupils aged 11 in the year of the outbreak and in subsequent years. He explains to Tim Phillips that, although there certainly are falls in achievement immediately after disruption, this effect fades over subsequent years.
James Reade 14 October 2020
Tim Phillips talks to James Reade (University of Reading) about his research investigating the impact of regular mass outdoor meetings on the spread of a virus by considering football matches in England in February and March 2020 and the spread of Covid-19 into April 2020. Although the evidence points to an increase of cases and deaths linked with mass outdoor events there are simple adjustments than can be made to lessen their risk.
Read the associated Covd Economics Paper here
Graziella Bertocchi 09 September 2020
Graziella Bertocchi (University of Modena & EIEF) uses a detailed individual-level dataset from Cook County, Illinois, to explore the relationship between COVID-19 mortality and race. Not only are Black Americans disproportionally affected by COVID-19, but they also started to succumb to it earlier than other groups. Such asymmetric effects can be traced back to racial segregation introduced by discriminatory lending practices in the 1930s.