Our faculty is contributing to the set of facts, economic analysis and proposals related to Covid-19.

• In the forthcoming paper “Business Formation: A Tale of Two Recessions”, Professor Haltiwanger and co-authors employ novel real time measures of business formation and find that after an initial sharp decline early in the pandemic, there has been a surge in applications for new businesses. The surge has been especially strong for likely new nonemployer businesses but there has also been a surge for likely new employer businesses. These patterns differ dramatically from those in the Great Recession. The study has been covered by NPR, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Forbes and Bloomberg.
   
• In "The Economic Case for Global Vaccinations", Prof. Kalemli-Ozcan and co-authors estimate that the economic costs of an unequal global vaccine distribution, relative to a counterfactual of global vaccinations, can be as high as 4 trillion USD in 2021, where half of these costs will be borne out by advanced economies, even if they achieve universal vaccination early in 2021. The study incorporates sectoral infection dynamics and sectoral trade and production network using 65 countries and 35 sectors. The study was covered by the Financial Times and New York Times. Prof. Kalemli-Ozcan explained the results at a WHO press conference Jan. 25th 2021 and on February 10th 2021 for NBER and Voxeu.
   
• Professor Kalemli-Ozcan shows that SME failures will increase around 9 pp under COVID, based on firm level data from 17 countries. The fiscal cost of saving these firms are low when the policy is targeted to firms who are viable in the long run but failing only due to COVID shock. You can view the paper on NBER's website.
   
• Professor Kalemli-Ozcan shows that emerging markets EMs can have much deeper recessions under COVID than advanced countries as they have less fiscal space to cope and linked more to global economy though supply chains and capital flows. You can view the paper on NBER's website.
   
• In "Learning from Deregulation: The Asymmetric Impact of Lockdown and Reopening on Risky Behavior During COVID-19", Professor Jin (with Edward Glaeser, Michael Luca and Ben Leyden) show that stay-at-home orders had a limited impact on restaurant activities, but these activities rose quickly after states’ reopenings.
   
• 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 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.