In response to strong revenue and income losses that a large share of the self-employed faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, the German federal government introduced a €50bn emergency aid program. Based on real-time online-survey data comprising more than 20,000 observations, we analyze the...

The COVID-19 pandemic led to an unprecedented level of job losses in the U.S., where a job loss is also associated with the loss of health insurance. This paper uses data from the 2020 Household Pulse Survey (HPS) and difference-in-difference (DD) regressions to estimate the effect of the...

Was the $278 billion reboot of the $800 billion Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) in early 2021 disbursed equitably to minority communities? This paper provides the first analysis of how PPP funds were disbursed to minority communities in the third and final round of the program, which was...

We examine the effect of the Covid pandemic on willingness to work along both the extensive and intensive margins of labor supply. Special survey questions in the Job Search Supplement of the Survey of Consumer Expectations (SCE) allow us to elicit information about individuals' desired work...

We examine the efficacy of affirmative action at universities whose value depends on peer and alumni networks. We study an elite Brazilian university that adopted race- and income-based affirmative action at a large scale. Using employer-employee data, we show that a key benefit of attending the...

The advent of a pandemic is an exogenous shock, but the dynamics of contagion are very much endogenous --and depend on choices that individuals make in response to incentives. In such an episode, economic policy can make a difference not just by alleviating economic losses but also via...

We analyze the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on state and local government finances, with an emphasis on health spending needs and the role of the Medicaid program. We arrive at three conclusions. First, we find that nationwide, and over the entirety of the federal budget window, the enhanced...

Were workers more likely to be infected by COVID-19 in their workplace, or outside it? While both economic models of the pandemic and public health policy recommendations often presume that the workplace is less safe, this paper seeks an answer both in micro data and economic theory. The...

We analyze data from a survey we administered during the COVID-19 pandemic to investigate the relationship between people's subjective risk beliefs and their protective behaviors. We report three main findings. First, on average, people substantially overestimate the absolute level of risk...

We estimate the likelihood of financial distress of U.S. hospitals in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic using AHA Annual Survey data for 2011-2019 and smartphone mobility data for 2020. We find that while the average likelihood of distress across all hospitals is 28.53 % in 2020, slightly...