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The particular strength of our Department in Health Economics and its connection to macroeconomics and empirical microeconomics pays off. Our faculty look at all aspects of the pandemic from measurement to policy, to long run effects and to many other related issues.

What to Do

• Krueger and Rios-Rull with Fed Researchers Glover and Heathcote look at the differential impact of the pandemic on young versus old, on first line workers, hedged from unemployment but in more danger from the pandemic, and second line workers, in trouble from the economic slowdown, and assess how they favor different policies in Health versus Wealth: On the Distributional Effects of Controlling a Pandemic Abstract :[...]

Measurement of the Spread of COVID-19

• Fang with coauthors Wang and Yang on the measurement of how the lockdown of Wuhan contained the spread of the virus in the rest of China. Human Mobility Restrictions and the Spread of the Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in China Abstract: [...]

• Krueger with coauthors Uhlig and Xie on what are the effects of doing nothing in terms of shutdown but letting citizens reallocate their consumption voluntarily into social distancing activities. Macroeconomic Dynamics and Reallocation in an Epidemic Abstract: [...]

• Fernandez-Villaverde with coauthor Jones use data on the spread of the disease in many places to pose and estimate estimate epidemiolgical models where the way people contact with each other has been shrinking over time: Estimating and Simulating a SIRD Model of COVID-19 for Many Countries, States, and Cities Abstract: [...]

Long Term Effects

• Ordoñez with coatuhor Erol on how social distancing is creating a a new network of social relations with ramifications on growth and inequality. Social and Economic Distancing Abstract : [...]

• Vohra and coauthor Talamàs on the possible dangers of vaccines that are only partially effective Free and perfectly safe but only partially effective vaccines can harm everyone Abstract: [...]

Other Ongoing Econ at Penn/PIER Research

• Atal is using the variation in location that data from Google displays over time to assess how much of the reduction in non-respiratory related trips to Emergency Rooms is related to changes in every day activities.

• Behrman has added COVID-19 telephone surveys to a variety of projects:

   

  1. • Impact of ante-natal pollution on birth and early-life outcomes in Guandong, China (with Xiaoying Liu and Emily Hannum).
     • Longitudinal survey (since 1998) in Malawi (with HP Kohler and Iliana Kohler).
     • Longitudinal survey in Chile (with Irma Elo and David Bravo).
     • Longitudinal survey for parents of young school age children in Ghana (with Sharon Wolfe, Betta Aurino, Larry Aber).

• Schorfheide is developing a panel model that produces density forecasts of Covid-19 infections for a panel of more than one-hundred countries.

• Fang is studying optimal lockdown and reopening policies in SIR models. He is also looking at how politics affects the mitigation policies chosen across counties. Another of his projects involves the evolution of labor markets in China both during and after the outbreak.