Early non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) significantly reduced the death toll of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, there are vast differences in how quickly governments implemented NPIs. In this paper, we analyze the role of public attention, measured as the share of daily Google searches in a...

Strict containment limits the spread of pandemics but is difficult to achieve when people must continue to work to avoid poverty. A new role is emerging for income support: by enabling people to effectively stay home, it can produce substantial health externalities. We examine this issue using...

Better understanding whether and how communities respond to government decisions is crucial for policy makers and health officials in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, we document the socioeconomic determinants of COVID-19 stay-at-home orders' compliance in the U.S. Using cell...

We study the relationship between trust and vaccination. We show theoretically that vaccination rates are higher in countries with more transparent and accountable governments. The mechanism that generates this result is the lower probability of a transparent and accountable government to...

Using detailed daily information covering 100 countries and an event-study approach, we estimate the short run effects of implementing Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs) on the spread of the COVID-19 virus at the early stages of the pandemic. We study the impact of two NPIs -stay-at-home...

Over the first half of March 2021, the majority of European governments suspended Astrazeneca's Vaxzevria vaccine as a precaution following media reports of rare blood clots. We analyse the impact of the European Medicines Agency's (EMA) March 18th statement assuring the public of the safety of...

To assess the efficacy of Covid-19 non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) on infectious disease containment in Europe, we first use weekly 2015-20 data on the spread of influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) to compare the 2019-20 season of these diseases with the previous five....