Our faculty is contributing to the set of facts, economic analysis and proposals related to Covid-19.
- In “COVID-19 Social Insurance Payments to U.S. Households” Professor Kearney (and Luke Pardue, Ph.D. student) provide evidence that “the payments currently being proposed under the Senate CARES Act would deliver large sums of money to individuals working in industries expected to be most hard hit, and to families with children.”
- In “Are Standard Macro Policies Enough to Deal with the Economic Fallout from a Global Pandemic?” Professors Drechsel and Kalemli-Özcan discuss alternative policies to mitigate the costs of the pandemic.
- In “The Smart Way to Save Jobs in the Time of Coronavirus” Professor Katharine Abraham (and Susan Houseman) propose work-sharing as a way to keep workers on payroll.
- In “Applications for New Businesses Contract Sharply in Recent Weeks: A First Look at the Weekly Business Formation Statistics”, Prof. Haltiwanger provides analysis of the sharp decline in business formation during the COVID-19 crisis. Professor Haltiwanger has been advising the U.S. Census Bureau in the development of this novel real time weekly database that is tracking business formation at the national, region and state level. The latest data can be found at the Census Bureau's website
- The Chicago Booth Review highlights possible lessons from Professor Stevens work for the behavior of prices in the Covid-19 period. What does the Covid-19 crisis imply for inflation dynamics going forward? Will we see deflation, as demand collapses, or rapid inflation, as the Federal Reserve engages in a massive quantitative easing program? The patterns during the Great Recession that Prof. Stevens studies in “Coarse Pricing Policies,” suggest that the most likely outcome is muted aggregate inflation, coupled with large distortions in relative prices.
