A series of crises, culminating with COVID-19, shows that going "Beyond GDP" is urgently necessary. Social and environmental degradation are consequences of emphasizing GDP as a measure of progress. This degradation created the conditions for the COVID-19 pandemic and limited the efficacy of...

This research explores the persistent effect of the Neolithic Revolution on the evolution of life expectancy in the course of human history. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that the onset of the Neolithic Revolution and the associated rise in infectious diseases triggered...

This paper investigates greenhouse gas emissions convergence among twenty Latin American countries, for the period 1970 to 2015. To that end, we use the Phillips-Sul methodology to examine whether these countries have followed an absolute convergence process or, whether there has been a club...

Little evidence currently exists on the effects of COVID-19 on air quality in poorer countries, where most air pollution-linked deaths occur. We offer the first study that examines the pandemic’s impacts on improving air quality in Vietnam, a lower-middle income country with worsening air...

Despite a growing literature on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, scant evidence currently exists on its impacts on air quality. We offer the first study that provides cross-national evidence on the causal impacts of COVID-19 on air pollution. We assemble a rich database consisting of daily,...

This paper estimates the impact of University reopenings in Scotland in Autumn 2020 on COVID-19 cases in Scottish neighbourhoods. We geolocate all student halls in Scotland, and merge this data with neighbourhood-level case data. We employ a local differences-indi fferences strategy and tackle...

This contribution reviews the rich interdisciplinary literature covering the relationship between the diffusion of COVID-19 and the adoption of technologies in various sectors of the economy, ranging from health care facilities to manufacturing companies. Besides covering the technical and...

Voluminous vaccine campaigns are used globally since the COVID-19 pandemic owes devastating mortality and destructively unprecedented consequences on different aspects of economies. Notwithstanding different approaches to measure the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines in clinical medicines, this...

This paper assesses the impact of the Covid-19 lockdown measures on the mental health of individuals in the UK, starting from the early restrictions in April 2020, and covering three subsequent lockdowns, up until March 2021. It also considers three aspects of mental health; that is 'anxiety and...

Elections define representative democracies, but also produce spikes in physical mobility if voters need to travel to electoral rooms. In this paper, we examine whether large-scale, in-person elections propagate the spread of COVID-19. We exploit a natural experiment from the Czech Republic...