Webinar Series

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Pandemic

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May 2020

Income, Liquidity, and the Consumption Response to the 2020 Economic Stimulus Payments

Scott R. BAKER, Steffen MEYER, R.A. FARROKHNIA, Michaela PAGEL, Constantine YANNELIS
In response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the US government brought about a collection of fiscal stimulus measures: the 2020 CARES Act. We study direct payments to households starting in April 2020 using high-frequency transaction data. We explore the response of household spending to these stim...
Keywords: Consumption, COVID-19, Stimulus, MPC, Household Finance, transaction data
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Webinar Series

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Pandemic

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May 2020

The Cost of Privacy: Welfare Effects of the Disclosure of COVID-19 Cases

Chang-Tai HSIEH, David ARGENTE, Munseob LEE
South Korea publicly disclosed detailed location information of individuals that tested positive for COVID-19. We quantify the effect of public disclosure on the transmission of the virus and economic losses in Seoul. We use detailed foot-traffic data from South Korea’s largest mobile phone compan...
Keywords: COVID-19, Privacy, Welfare effects
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Webinar Series

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Pandemic

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May 2020

Macroeconomic Implications of COVID-19: Can Negative Supply Shocks Cause Demand Shortages?

Veronica GUERRIERI, Guido LORENZONI, Ludwig STRAUB, Iván WERNING
We present a theory of Keynesian supply shocks: supply shocks that trigger changes in aggregate demand larger than the shocks themselves. We argue that the economic shocks associated to the COVID-19 epidemic—shutdowns, layoffs, and firm exits—may have this feature. In one-sector economies supply...
Keywords: 2019-nCoVCOVID-19, Disease Outbreak, Supply Shocks, Demand Shortages, Macroeconomic Implications
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Webinar Series

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Pandemic

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May 2020

Internal and External Effects of Social Distancing in a Pandemic

Maryam FARBOODI, Gregor JAROSCH, Robert SHIMER
We use a conventional dynamic economic model to integrate individual optimization, equilibrium interactions, and policy analysis into the canonical epidemiological model. Our tractable framework allows us to represent both equilibrium and optimal allocations as a set of differential equations that c...
Keywords: Social Distancing, 2019-nCoVCOVID-19, Disease Outbreak
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Senior Fellows/Fellows

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Senior Fellows/Fellows

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Feb 2017

Production Flexibility, Misallocation And Total Factor Productivity

Ping WANG, Burak R. URAS
Economy-wide institutional deficiencies causing factor misallocation have been emphasized as essential determinants of aggregate TFP differences. This paper argues that production flexibility at the micro-level is an economic characteristic that should be given priority in TFP aggregation exercises....
Keywords: Total factor productivity, production flexibility, factor misallocation
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