Medicine / Special Report

Vol. 5, NO. 1 / April 2020

The Political, Economic, and Social Consequences of the COVID-19 Pandemic

The Editors

← SARS-CoV-2: Research Guide

The following list of papers and articles will be updated regularly and is offered here as a resource for researchers and interested readers.


  • Disaster Resilience and Asset Prices (Preprint)

    Marco Pagano, Christian Wagner and Josef Zechner / May 18, 2020

    This paper investigates whether security markets price the effect of social distancing on firms' operations. We document that firms that are more resilient to social distancing significantly outperformed those with lower resilience during the COVID-19 outbreak, even after controlling for the standard risk factors. Similar cross-sectional return differentials already emerged before the COVID-19 crisis: the 2014-19 cumulative return differential between more and less resilient firms is of similar size as during the outbreak, suggesting growing awareness of pandemic risk well in advance of its materialization. Finally, we use stock option prices to infer the market's return expectations after the onset of the pandemic: even at a two-year horizon, stocks of more pandemic-resilient firms are expected to yield significantly lower returns than less resilient ones, reflecting their lower exposure to disaster risk. Hence, going forward, markets appear to price exposure to a new risk factor, namely, pandemic risk.

    Marco Pagano, Christian Wagner and Josef Zechner, "Disaster Resilience and Asset Prices," arXiv:2005.08929 (2020).

  • Coronavirus Policy Response Simulator: Health and Economic Effects of State Reopenings

    Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania / May 1, 2020

    Using an integrated, interdisciplinary modeling approach, this simulator forecasts the state-level health and economic effects of reopening businesses and relaxing stay-at-home orders. This simulator will be updated regularly as new data arrive.

    “Coronavirus Policy Response Simulator: Health and Economic Effects of State Reopenings,” Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (2020)

  • Under Lockdown Amid COVID-19 Pandemic, Europe Feels the Pinch from Slowed Intra-EU Labor Mobility

    Monica Andriescu / May 1, 2020

    Freedom of movement has been the cornerstone of the European Union for nearly three decades, but the COVID-19 pandemic has put a chill on this right, both as a result of national government actions to contain the spread of the virus and workers’ own hesitance to travel in an era of social distancing and uncertain times.

    Monica Andriescu, “Under Lockdown Amid COVID-19 Pandemic, Europe Feels the Pinch from Slowed Intra-EU Labor Mobility,” Migration Policy Institute (2020).

  • Coronavirus Could Lead to the Next Wave of Automation

    Sharon Graham / April 17, 2020

    After the financial crisis working people paid the price through cuts to jobs, pay and public services. Once stabilized, the big question of the pandemic will once again be, who pays for the crash?

    Sharon Graham, “Coronavirus Could Lead to the Next Wave of Automation,” Tribune Mag (2020).

  • The Inexorable Rise of the Pandemic State? Second-guessing the Long-term Political Repercussions of COVID⁠-⁠19

    Brendan Flynn / April 16, 2020

    When COVID-19 ends as a pandemic, what will be the political repercussions? Will there be lasting consequences for states and their relationships with citizens, markets or societies more generally? How about the following as suggestions?
    • Western states will for the duration of the pandemic become inevitably more authoritarian, getting used to restricting freedom of movement and association, and this may create surprisingly long-lasting legacies.
    • Health policies in western societies are already politically salient, but the pandemic could forge a consensus that makes the role of states in health care dominant. Should we begin to speak about a ‘re-nationalization’ of western healthcare systems? States may also explore developing health policies through an ‘an emergency policy’ paradigm to respond to future pandemics.
    • Global tech giants that dominate the online marketplace will plausibly emerge from the pandemic with their market share enhanced: all that home working, video conferencing, online shopping and downloads will mean their huge commercial power is strengthened. The case for state regulation (break-up?) of them might grow, but the same could as easily be sidelined as our extraordinary dependency on ‘surveillance capitalism’ will be magnified by the crisis. International tech giants working closely with increasingly authoritarian national states is one possible future.
    • How China emerges from the pandemic will be important for global international relations, and our wider understanding of how states should interact with markets, firms and citizens, or whether globalization will be reversed, slow down, or re-cast. If China emerges as a ‘model’ of how to defeat the pandemic, it will, regrettably, probably reinforce the already emergent interest in hybrid forms of ‘state-capitalist authoritarianism’, or just enhance the global leadership role of China, probably at the expense of the USA.

    Brendan Flynn, “The Inexorable Rise of the Pandemic State? Second-Guessing the long-term political repercussions of COVID-19,” Moore Institute (2020).

  • The State of Biopower in the Age of the Coronavirus

    Joanna Wuest / April 16, 2020

    The unfolding global crisis induced by COVID-19 has led states to scramble as they collect scarce medical resources, impose business shutdowns and national quarantines, and close off borders to slow its transmission. To contain the initial outbreak, officials in Wuhan quickly constructed makeshift hospitals. Soon after, the Chinese national government locked down major cities. Upon hitting Singapore and South Korea, officials implemented vigilant surveillance methods to track down test cases, treat patients, and—most importantly—isolate the infected immediately. These and many other states have deployed a mix of public education campaigns, shelters in place, and stimulus aid to workers, all in an effort to maintain the health of their populations.
    As all of these measures relate to the state management of a society’s health, they are the province of what philosophers and social theorists term “biopolitics.” Owing its modern origins to the late-career writings of Michel Foucault, biopolitics—styled also as “biopower”—is a theoretical paradigm concerning the modern state, social, and economic overwatch and dominion over a population’s health and vitality. In endeavors to comprehend the contemporary crisis, philosophers like Giorgio Agamben have indicted the state in particular for its “invention of a pandemic” and the supposed totalitarian form and consequences of its response. As a rejoinder, others have mused about the democratic or communist potential of biopolitics that might take the place of governmental action from on high during these society-wide healthcare emergencies.

    Joanna Wuest, “The State of Biopower in the Age of the Coronavirus,” The Philosophical Salon (2020).

  • How Digital Contact Tracing Slowed Covid-19 in East Asia

    Yasheng Huang, Meicen Sun, and Yuze Sui / April 15, 2020

    As Covid-19 steamrolls across international boundaries, public health officials are paying close attention to countries that are flattening the curve, slowing the spread of infection. Can other countries emulate their success? Top of mind has been whether authoritarian regimes have an edge over democracies, because they can mandate top-down measures like lockdowns and digital tracking of infected people’s movements and contacts. Indeed, China’s foreign minister Wang Yi proclaimed “Only in China and only under the leadership of President Xi can there be such effective measures to put this sudden and fast-spreading epidemic under control.”
    But the latest information from Our World in Data, which shows the doubling rate of cases by country, indicates that the type of regime is less important than it might seem. Both the top and bottom performers in Covid-19 containment span the spectrum from autocratic to democratic. It’s true that China is effectively flattening the curve, but so is South Korea, a vibrant democracy. Other democracies — the U.S., Spain, Italy, and France, are faring less well.

    Yasheng Huang, Meicen Sun, and Yuze Sui, “How Digital Contact Tracing Slowed Covid-19 in East Asia,” Harvard Business Review (2020).

  • The State of the Worldwide Economy at the Start of the COVID-19 Recession: Historical Milestones, Analyses and Illustrations

    François Chesnais / April 12, 2020

    As a result of the pandemic's spread at an unexpected speed, particularly in the United States, estimates of the depth of the recession that has started, and of its differentiated impacts in different parts of the world economy have become constantly changed. For several weeks, the relevant benchmark was the economic and financial crisis of 2007-2009 and the recession that followed. But since the release of unemployment figures in the United States, there is now talk of a depression of a magnitude that may approximate the Great Depression of the 1930s.

    François Chesnais, “L’état de l’économie mondiale au début de la grande récession Covid-19: repères historiques, analyses et illustrations [The State of the Worldwide Economy at the Start of the COVID-19 Recession: Historical Milestones, Analyses and Illustrations],” A l’Encontre (2020).

  • Softening the Blow of the Pandemic: Will the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Make Things Worse?

    Alexander Kentikelenis et al. / April 9, 2020

    The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is not only stretching health systems to their limits, it is rapidly becoming a threat to the entire global economy, on a scale much greater than the 2007–08 financial crisis. Policymakers from high-income countries have been quick to respond, pledging unprecedented amounts of support to citizens and businesses. The EU announced a “no limits” commitment to protect European economies by purchasing sovereign and corporate debt, while the US congress has agreed a US$2 trillion stimulus bill.
    Such measures are not, however, open to low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), which will face the brunt of the COVID-19 burden. Emerging markets were among the first from which investors fled and have so far withdrawn more than $83 billion from them, the largest capital flow ever recorded. This limits the credit available to governments and businesses, pushes down commodity prices and real economic activity, and ultimately reduces health-system budgets at a time when capacity urgently needs to expand.
    The G20 countries envisaged the two leading global financial institutions, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, playing a central role in supporting these countries, acting as “financial firefighters”. In recent weeks, both announced a set of tools to deal with the pandemic's impact. But is this the best way to achieve lasting global health security?

    Alexander Kentikelenis et al., “Softening the Blow of the Pandemic: Will the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Make Things Worse?” The Lancet Global Health (2020), doi:10.1016/S2214-109X(20)30135-2.

  • How Will COVID-19 Affect the Health Care Economy?

    David Cutler / April 9, 2020

    Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has created an economic crisis alongside a health care crisis. During the 2 weeks ending on March 28, nearly 10 million people filed for unemployment insurance, dwarfing any previous monthly numbers. Estimates suggest that the US economy will contract by 10% to 25% during the second quarter. The US has entered a COVID-19 recession.
    Historically, health care has been relatively immune from recessions. People get sick during both good and bad times, so demand for medical care is relatively constant across the business cycle. Furthermore, health insurance reduces the out-of-pocket costs for care that people face; thus, many sick people—at least those with health insurance—can still afford to visit physicians.
    However, the COVID-19 recession is shaping up to be different. For starters, people are being asked to curtail outside activities. This is particularly true for those who have medical conditions that put them at higher risk—the type of individuals who use health care the most. On top of this is the desire to keep medical offices clear to reduce the risk of being a point of disease spread. In addition, the insurance that privately insured patients have today is less generous than it was during past recessions. More than one-quarter of those with private insurance have an insurance policy with a deductible of $2000 or more, 4 times the percentage of people who had a deductible that high one decade ago. With cash tight, people will postpone all kinds of care, from office visits to imaging procedures to filling prescriptions for medications.

    David Cutler, “How Will COVID-19 Affect the Health Care Economy?,” JAMA Network (2020).

  • Work After Quarantine

    Brishen Rogers / April 7, 2020

    COVID-19 has upended our economy, but not our class structure. The virus itself does not discriminate based on income, race, or ethnicity, but exposure and severity of infection skew heavily along those lines. Where we fall in the division of labor, the racial caste structure, and the distribution of wealth today quite literally determines our susceptibility to premature death.
    Under social distancing orders, professionals have retreated to their homes, but low-wage workers continue to stock shelves, deliver food, and care for the sick, often without basic protective equipment. Tens of millions of others have lost their jobs, and many are now locked down with older and younger family members, or even amid crowds in cities. Maps released by New York City showed that wealthier areas of Manhattan had low rates of infection, while working-class and poor districts of Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx had the highest. Because working-class people and people of color are far more likely to suffer from overwork, lack of decent health care, and environmental exposure, they have higher rates of comorbidities, including diabetes, heart disease, and emphysema.
    Things will get much worse before they get better. While Congress has finally passed paid sick leave, the legislation has many loopholes and will not cover workers at most large companies. That is one reason low-wage workers continue to work. Congress has also expanded unemployment benefits, but without further relief many families many will soon be unable to buy food. While some health insurers have promised to wave patients’ share of costs for COVID-19 treatment, many remain uninsured, and we will likely see a wave of bankruptcies.

    Brishen Rogers, “Work After Quarantine” Boston Review (2020)

  • COVID-19, School Closures, and Child Poverty: A Social Crisis in the Making

    Wim Van Lancker and Zachary Parolin / April 7, 2020

    While coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) continues to spread across the globe, many countries have decided to close schools as part of a physical distancing policy to slow transmission and ease the burden on health systems. The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization estimates that 138 countries have closed schools nationwide, and several other countries have implemented regional or local closures. These school closures are affecting the education of 80% of children worldwide. Although scientific debate is ongoing with regard to the effectiveness of school closures on virus transmission, the fact that schools are closed for a long period of time could have detrimental social and health consequences for children living in poverty, and are likely to exacerbate existing inequalities. We discuss two mechanisms through which school closures will affect poor children in the USA and Europe.

    Wim Van Lancker and Zachary Parolin, “COVID-19, School Closures, and Child Poverty: A Social Crisis in the Making,” The Lancet Public Health (2020), “doi:10.1016/S2468-2667(20)30084-0.

  • Because after the Coronavirus We Will Need a Plan for the Psychiatric Emergency

    Costanza Jesurum / April 6, 2020

    We don't have many experiences like this in our generational memory of first-world Westerners. There have recently been dangerous and virulent epidemics, but which at least in our country have not been characterized by the incredible speed that characterizes the pandemic from COVID-19. That of SARS in Italy has infected 4 people, others have not arrived at all, still others such as the tragic and not yet resolved of AIDS, have been linked to identifiable and circumscribable behaviors. We have nothing comparable in our history, because the last pandemic that resembled this one, that of Spagnola, made its massacres in 1918-1920, when almost none of us had been born. On the other hand, even if we could, in 1918 the world was very different, from different points of view, there was no knowledge that there is today, there was no economy that there is today, neither was there all in all the idea of ??res publica and of welfare that we have today, and which permeates our idea of ??state, and of management of public affairs. Furthermore, in the Spanish era, life expectancy was also very different, there was a sort of resignation to the tragic from birth. Even the world of war, evoked in some comparisons especially by those who live in the regions most affected by the epidemic, now, fortunately for us, is about seventy years old, concerns the memories of our elders: many of us, however much Italy is a country of old people, they were born later, or at the time of the war they were little more than children.

    Jesurum, Costanza, “Because after the Coronavirus We Will Need a Plan for the Psychiatric Emergency,” The Vision (2020).

  • The Pandemic is a Portal

    Arundhati Roy / April 3, 2020

    Who can use the term “gone viral” now without shuddering a little? Who can look at anything any more — a door handle, a cardboard carton, a bag of vegetables — without imagining it swarming with those unseeable, undead, unliving blobs dotted with suction pads waiting to fasten themselves on to our lungs?
    Who can think of kissing a stranger, jumping on to a bus or sending their child to school without feeling real fear? Who can think of ordinary pleasure and not assess its risk? Who among us is not a quack epidemiologist, virologist, statistician and prophet? Which scientist or doctor is not secretly praying for a miracle? Which priest is not — secretly, at least — submitting to science?
    And even while the virus proliferates, who could not be thrilled by the swell of birdsong in cities, peacocks dancing at traffic crossings and the silence in the skies?

    Arundhati Roy, “The Pandemic is a Portal,” The Financial Times (2020)

  • Quantifying SARS-CoV-2 Transmission Suggests Epidemic Control with Digital Contact Tracing

    Luca Ferretti et al. / March 31, 2020

    The newly emergent human virus SARS-CoV-2 is resulting in high fatality rates and incapacitated health systems. Preventing further transmission is a priority. We analysed key parameters of epidemic spread to estimate the contribution of different transmission routes and determine requirements for case isolation and contact-tracing needed to stop the epidemic. We conclude that viral spread is too fast to be contained by manual contact tracing, but could be controlled if this process was faster, more efficient and happened at scale. A contact-tracing App which builds a memory of proximity contacts and immediately notifies contacts of positive cases can achieve epidemic control if used by enough people. By targeting recommendations to only those at risk, epidemics could be contained without need for mass quarantines (“lock-downs”) that are harmful to society. We discuss the ethical requirements for an intervention of this kind.

    Luca Ferretti et al., “Quantifying SARS-CoV-2 Transmission Suggests Epidemic Control with Digital Contact Tracing,” medRxiv (2020), doi:10.1101/2020.03.08.20032946.

  • Contact Tracing Mobile Apps for COVID-19: Privacy Considerations and Related Trade-offs (Preprint)

    Hyunghoon Cho, Daphne Ippolito, and Yun William Yu / March 30, 2020

    Contact tracing is an essential tool for public health officials and local communities to fight the spread of novel diseases, such as for the COVID-19 pandemic. The Singaporean government just released a mobile phone app, TraceTogether, that is designed to assist health officials in tracking down exposures after an infected individual is identified. However, there are important privacy implications of the existence of such tracking apps. Here, we analyze some of those implications and discuss ways of ameliorating the privacy concerns without decreasing usefulness to public health. We hope in writing this document to ensure that privacy is a central feature of conversations surrounding mobile contact tracing apps and to encourage community efforts to develop alternative effective solutions with stronger privacy protection for the users. Importantly, though we discuss potential modifications, this document is not meant as a formal research paper, but instead is a response to some of the privacy characteristics of direct contact tracing apps like TraceTogether and an early-stage Request for Comments to the community.

    Hyunghoon Cho, Daphne Ippolito, and Yun William Yu, “Contact Tracing Mobile Apps for COVID-19: Privacy Considerations and Related Trade-offs,” arXiv (2020), arXiv:2003.11511.

  • Market Structure Dynamics During COVID-19 Outbreak (Preprint)

    Pier Francesco Procacci, Carolyn Phelan, and Tomaso Aste / March 25, 2020

    In this note, we discuss the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak from the perspective of the market-structure. We observe that the US market-structure has dramatically changed during the past four weeks and that the level of change has followed the number of infected cases reported in the USA. Presently, market-structure resembles most closely the structure during the middle of the 2008 crisis but there are signs that it may be starting to evolve into a new structure altogether. This is the first article of a series where we will be analyzing and discussing market-structure as it evolves to a state of further instability or, more optimistically, stabilization and recovery.

    Pier Francesco Procacci, Carolyn Phelan, and Tomaso Aste, “Market Structure Dynamics During COVID-19 Outbreak,” arXiv:2003.10922 (2020).

  • A Balance Act: Minimizing Economic Loss While Controlling Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia

    Binlei Gong et al. / March 23, 2020

    The outbreak of Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia (NCP) has significantly affected China and beyond. How to effectively control such epidemic has gradually become a global issue. This paper reviews the economic impact of major epidemics such as SARS, H1N1, and Ebola at the micro-, sector-, and macro-level. The challenge of effective epidemic control is to achieve a balance between viral transmission reduction and economic cost. This paper then summarizes three main methods to evaluate the effectiveness of several control policies. We also find that the adequacy and authenticity of information disclosure is of great importance to minimize economic loss, as either public panic due to overestimation or lack of public awareness due to underestimation can cause additional negative economic impacts. Accurate and transparent disclosure of information plays a crucial role associated with fighting against the epidemic. Finally, the paper puts forward a number of policy recommendations to minimize economic loss while controlling the spread of COVID-19.

    Binlei Gong et al., “A Balance Act: Minimizing Economic Loss While Controlling Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia,” Journal of Chinese Governance (2020): 1–20, doi:23812346.2020.1741940.

  • COVID-19: The Medium Is the Message

    Laurie Garrett / March 21, 2020

    In a world of polarising distrust and trade tensions, the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), both within nations and internationally, is aided and abetted by misinformation that circumnavigates the planet in microseconds. Such misinformation is not all malevolent, although its impact can be devastating. The only bastion of defence against rising public panic, financial market hysteria, and unintended misunderstandings of the science and epidemiology of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is agile, accurate, worldwide-available counter-information that takes the high moral ground and conveys a consistently science-driven narrative. Some have sought to limit misinformation about COVID-19 on social media by pressuring corporations, such as Facebook, Weibo, and Twitter, to censor bad actors—an approach that has not stopped conspiracy theorists, trolls, and liars.

    Laurie Garrett, “COVID-19: The Medium Is the Message,” The Lancet 395, no. 10,228 (2020): 942–43, doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30600-0.

  • Coronavirus Perceptions and Economic Anxiety (Preprint)

    Thiemo Fetzer et al. / March 20, 2020

    We provide the first analysis of how the global spread of the novel coronavirus affects contemporaneous economic sentiment. First, we collect a global dataset on internet searches indicative of economic anxieties. We find that the arrival of coronavirus in a country led to a substantial increase in such internet searches of up to 58 percent. Second, leveraging two US representative survey experiments conducted in early and mid-March 2020, we document a rapid surge in economic anxieties after the arrival of the coronavirus in the US. Third, to understand how information about the coronavirus affects these anxieties, we measure perceptions about the coronavirus. We find substantial heterogeneity in participants’ beliefs about the mortality from and contagiousness of the virus. Fourth, experimentally providing participants with information about mortality and contagiousness causally affects participants’ worries regarding the aggregate economy and their personal economic situation. Finally, we document that participants’ subjective mental models understate the non-linear nature of disease spread, and that these mental models shape the extent of economic worries. These results underscore the importance of public education about the virus for successful containment as well as the need for timely measures that decrease economic hardship and anxiety during a major global pandemic.

    Thiemo Fetzer et al., “Coronavirus Perceptions and Economic Anxiety,” arXiv:2003.03848 (2020).

  • Mass Gathering Events and Reducing Further Global Spread of COVID-19: A Political and Public Health Dilemma

    Brian McCloskey et al. / March 20, 2020

    The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in China in 2019–20 as a pathogen transmitted by the respiratory route leading to the COVID-19 pandemic has refocused global attention on national, regional, and pandemic spread through Mass Gathering (MG) events. Since early March 2020, there has been a step increase in cancellation of international and national religious, sporting, musical, and other MGs as countries worldwide take measures to contain the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Many prominent MGs have been cancelled or postponed, including sports fixtures such as the Union of European Football Associations Euro 2020 football championship, the Formula 1 Grand Prix in China, the Six Nations rugby championship in Italy and Ireland, Olympic boxing qualifying events, the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and the Umrah in Saudi Arabia. Although appropriate public health surveillance and interventions for reducing the risk of disease transmission at MGs are informed by previous experiences, the evidence base for infectious disease transmission during MGs is still evolving and needs to be more comprehensive. For COVID-19, in addition to the major public health risks at MGs, the management of enhanced media interest and public and political perceptions and expectations are major challenges. Fear, uncertainty, and a desire not to be seen to get things wrong can influence decisions about the risks of MGs, rather than an understanding of the risks and of the interventions available to reduce that risk.

    Brian McCloskey et al., “Mass Gathering Events and Reducing Further Global Spread of COVID-19: A Political and Public Health Dilemma,” The Lancet (2020), doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30681-4.

  • When a Virus Emerges, We Ask the Researchers to Find a Solution for the Next Day, and Then We Forget

    Bruno Canard / March 20, 2020

    Bruno Canard, director of research at the CNRS, has worked for twenty years on the coronavirus, with scant means. He is angry at the public powers that disengaged themselves from large research projects, the importance of which we now seem to be (re)discovering today as Emmanuel Macron announces “raising 5 billion euros for our research efforts.”

    Bruno Canard, “Quand un virus émerge, on demande aux chercheurs de trouver une solution pour le lendemain, ensuite on oublie [When a Virus Emerges, We Ask Researchers to Find a Solution for the Next Day, and Then We Forget],” basta, March 20, 2020.

  • What Will the Post-Coronavirus Global Economy Look Like?

    https://braveneweurope.com/marshall-auerback-what-will-the-post-coronavirus-global-economy-look-like / March 17, 2020

    The coronavirus has now gone global, and economies are in freefall. The pandemic is clearly the precipitating cause of today’s crisis, but there’s an underlying disease that has been with us for a long time: neoliberal economics. Globalized travel and trade, multinational supply lines, offshoring and overly financialised economies that have prioritized banking interests, cartels and oligarchy above all else have made a large portion of our population highly vulnerable to the effects unleashed by this pandemic.

    Marshall Auerback, “What Will the Post-Coronavirus Global Economy Look Like?” Brave New Europe, March 17, 2020.

  • Coronavirus Will Revive an All-Powerful State

    Pankaj Mishra / March 17, 2020

    Threatening the world with a long recession, the coronavirus looks set to inaugurate a turbulent new political and economic era. Its main tendencies will become visible over the months and years to come. But the most revolutionary shift is already in sight.
    The state, much maligned in recent decades, is back, and in its fundamental role: as Leviathan, the preventer of anarchy, and the ultimate insurance against an intolerable human condition in which life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
    In all countries where the coronavirus first spread—China, South Korea, Iran, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Italy—the state leads the war against it, imposing draconian lockdowns on entire populations, ruthlessly sacrificing personal liberty to security. Whether such heavy-handed interventions will eventually succeed—they seem to be working for now in Singapore and China, countries with great state capacity—is still unclear. Nevertheless, in many other countries, ruling politicians seem to realize that they will be judged by their administrative capacity to check the spread of the virus.

    Pankaj Mishra, “Coronavirus Will Revive an All-Powerful State,” Bloomberg, March 17, 2020.

  • Do COVID-19 and Crude Oil Prices Drive the US Economic Policy Uncertainty? (Preprint)

    Claudiu Albulescu / March 17, 2020

    This paper investigates the effect of the novel coronavirus and crude oil prices on the United States (US) economic policy uncertainty (EPU). Using daily data for the period January 21–March 13, 2020, our Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model shows that the new infection cases reported at global level, and the death ratio, have no significant effect on the US EPU, whereas the oil price negative dynamics leads to increased uncertainty. However, analyzing the situation outside China, we discover that both new case announcements and the COVID-19 associated death ratio have a positive influence on the US EPU.

    Claudiu Albulescu, “Do COVID-19 and Crude Oil Prices Drive the US Economic Policy Uncertainty?” arXiv:2003.07591 (2020).

  • Exploring the Effect of 2019-nCoV Containment Policies on Crime: The Case of Los Angeles (Preprint)

    Gian Maria Campedelli, Alberto Aziani, and Serena Favarin / March 13, 2020

    The global spread of 2019-nCoV, a new virus belonging to the coronavirus family, forced national and local governments to apply different sets of measures aimed at containing the outbreak. Los Angeles has been one of the first cities in the United States to declare the state of emergency on March 4th, progressively issuing stronger policies involving (among the others) social distancing, the prohibition of crowded private and public gatherings and closure of leisure premises. These interventions highly disrupt and modify daily activities and habits, urban mobility and micro-level interactions between citizens. One of the many social phenomena that could be influenced by such measures is crime. Exploiting public data on crime in Los Angeles, and relying on routine activity and pattern theories of crime, this work investigates whether and how new coronavirus containment policies have an impact on crime trends in a metropolis. The article specifically focuses on eight urban crime categories, daily monitored from January 1st 2017 to March 16th 2020. The analyses will be updated bi-weekly to dynamically assess the short- and medium-term effects of these interventions to shed light on how crime adapts to such structural modification of the environment. Finally, policy implications are also discussed.

    Gian Maria Campedelli, Alberto Aziani, and Serena Favarin, “Exploring the Effect of 2019-nCoV Containment Policies on Crime: The Case of Los Angeles,” arXiv:2003.11021 (2020).

  • Modelling the Economic Impact and Ripple Effects of Disease Outbreaks

    Krista Yu and Kathleen Aviso / March 10, 2020

    The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak has had alarming effects on human lives and the economies of affected countries. With the world’s manufacturing hubs experiencing a period of extended factory closures, the economic impact transcends territorial borders via global supply chains. This paper provides a roadmap on how to evaluate the vulnerability that cascades through the supply chain due to a disease outbreak at the firm level, national level, and global scale. The final extent of losses is not yet known, but the development of economic models combined with epidemiological models and network analysis techniques can yield more realistic estimates to select appropriate strategies in a timely manner.

    Krista Yu and Kathleen Aviso, “Modelling the Economic Impact and Ripple Effects of Disease Outbreaks,” Process Integration and Optimization for Sustainability (2020): 1–4, doi:10.1007/s41660-020-00113-y.

  • Responding to Covid-19 — A Once-in-a-Century Pandemic?

    Bill Gates / February 28, 2020

    In any crisis, leaders have two equally important responsibilities: solve the immediate problem and keep it from happening again. The Covid-19 pandemic is a case in point. We need to save lives now while also improving the way we respond to outbreaks in general. The first point is more pressing, but the second has crucial long-term consequences.

    Bill Gates, “Responding to Covid-19 — A Once-in-a-Century Pandemic?,” New England Journal of Medicine, February 28, 2020, doi:10.1056/NEJMp2003762.

  • Authoritarianism, Outbreaks, and Information Politics

    Matthew Kavanagh / February 13, 2020

    Are autocratic states such as China better equipped than their more democratic counterparts to respond to disease outbreaks? On Dec 31, 2019, China alerted WHO to an outbreak of pneumonia of unknown cause in the city of Wuhan in Hubei province. The epidemic quickly spread, with cases of a novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) confirmed throughout China and elsewhere in Asia, Europe, North America, and Australia. The Chinese Government’s forceful response has drawn praise from global health officials. Scholars and health leaders have long debated whether democracy improves, hinders, or is immaterial for public health. Does this signal an authoritarian advantage in tackling outbreaks?

    Matthew Kavanagh, “Authoritarianism, Outbreaks, and Information Politics,” Lancet: Public Health 5, no. 3 (2020): e135–36, doi:10.1016/ S2468-2667(20)30030-X.

  • Economic Impacts of Wuhan 2019-nCoV on China and the World

    Foster Ayittey et al. / February 12, 2020

    Uncertainties over the Wuhan 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV), which has killed at least 1,775 people and sickened more than 70,000 as of February 17, has interrupted global trade and supply chains, depressing asset prices, and forced multinational businesses to make hard decisions with limited information.
    Wuhan has been identified as a principal financial hub for central China. It is a significant transportation and trade center, hosting the headquarters of the nation’s major local steel and vehicle makers. The city also serves as home to more than 300 factories of the world’s best 500 companies, including Microsoft, German software company SAP, and French car maker Groupe PSA. In recent years, its monetary development has been recorded to have surpassed China’s national growth, with a GDP growth of 7.8% in 2019 as against the national average of 6.1%. After the spreading of the recent viral disease, numerous firms have now evacuated their expat workers from the city and temporarily halted business activities. The strict travel restrictions that have been enforced in Wuhan and different urban communities in Hubei are expected to have ripple effects throughout China and beyond, as far as trade is concerned. Among the industries that would be negatively impacted, retail, tourism, and hospitality sectors are likely to be most affected.

    Foster Ayittey et al., “Economic Impacts of Wuhan 2019-nCoV on China and the World,” Journal of Medical Virology (2020), doi:10.1002/jmv.25706.

  • 2019-nCoV Epidemic: Address Mental Health Care to Empower Society

    Yanping Bao et al. / February 7, 2020

    The outbreak of 2019-nCoV in China has caused public panic and mental health stress. The increasing number of patients and suspected cases, and the increasing number of outbreak-affected provinces and countries have elicited public worry about becoming infected. The unpredictable future of this epidemic has been exacerbated by myths and misinformation, often driven by erroneous news reports and the public’s misunderstanding of health messages, thus causing worry in the population. Further travel bans and some executive orders to quarantine travellers during the Spring Festival holiday might have generated public anxiety while trying to contain the outbreak.

    Yanping Bao et al., “2019-nCoV Epidemic: Address Mental Health Care to Empower Society,” Lancet 395, no. 10,224 (2020): e37–38. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30309-3.

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