We estimate the causal effects of a pandemic-era wage subsidy program in Canada on job losses and business closures. Our estimates use administrative microdata and a regression discontinuity strategy to estimate the effects of marginal changes in the wage subsidy rate. The estimated net wage...

In this paper, we provide causal evidence of the immediate and near-term impact of stringent COVID-19 lockdown policies on employment outcomes, using Ghana as a case study. We take advantage of a specific policy setting, in which strict stay-at-home orders were issued and enforced in two...

We examine effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on employment losses across metropolitan area status and population size. Non-metropolitan and metropolitan areas of all sizes experienced significant employment losses, but the impacts are much larger in large metropolitan areas. Employment losses...

Vietnam is widely praised for its successful fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. The country has had an extremely low mortality rate of 35 deaths to date (out of a population of approximately 100 million) and currently has no community transmission. We offer the first study that examines the...

In 2021, the Biden Administration issued mandates requiring COVID-19 vaccinations for U.S. federal employees and contractors and for some healthcare and private sector workers. Although these mandates have been subject to legal challenges and some have been halted or delayed, rigorous appraisal...

Using the 2021 and 2022 HFPS for Ecuador, the paper investigates the labor market trajectories of different socio-economic groups. The analysis shows that the employment of older individuals, less-educated workers, and women fell disproportionately. However, while the recovery between 2021 and...

We examine employment effects of the COVID-19 crisis in Norway during the initial lockdown, through the subsequent recovery, and after the dust had settled. While we identify large and socially skewed effects of the crisis through its early phases, we find no long-term effects on employees...

It has been found that migrants and natives are affected differently by fluctuations in the business cycle. This paper analyses whether this is the case when considering the most recent economic downturn triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic. By using UK data, it finds that unemployment has...

The highly dynamic nature of the COVID-19 crisis poses an unprecedented challenge to policy makers around the world to take appropriate income-stabilizing countermeasures. To properly design such policy measures, it is important to quantify their effects in real-time. However, data on the...

We use a repeated large-scale survey of households in the Nielsen Homescan panel to characterize how labor markets are being affected by the covid-19 pandemic. We document several facts. First, job loss has been significantly larger than implied by new unemployment claims: we estimate 20 million...