The COVID-19 pandemic led many emerging market central banks to adopt, for the first time, unconventional policies in the form of asset purchase programs. In this study, we analyze the effects of these announcements on domestic financial markets using both event studies and local projections...

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted unprecedented economic stimulus worldwide. We empirically examine the impact of a withdrawal of fiscal stimulus policies on the stock markets. After constructing a database of withdrawal events, we use event study analysis and cross-country regressions to assess...

Lockdowns and voluntary social distancing led to significant reduction in people's mobility. Yet, there is scant evidence on the heterogeneous effects across segments of the population. Using unique mobility indicators based on anonymized and aggregate data provided by Vodafone for Italy,...

The large economic costs of full-blown lockdowns in response to COVID-19 outbreaks, coupled with heterogeneous mortality rates across age groups, led to question non-discriminatory containment measures. In this paper we provide an assessment of the targeted approach to containment. We propose a...

The COVID-19 pandemic could result in large government interventions in the banking industry. To shed light on the possible consequences on market power, we rely on the experience of the global financial crisis and exploit granular data on government interventions in more than 800 banks across...

We build a model to simulate how the euro area market-based financial system may function under stress. The core of the model is a set of representative agents re ecting key economic sectors, which interact in asset, funding, and derivatives markets and face solvency and liquidity constraints on...

This paper documents a durable increase in the cross-sectoral dispersion of earnings expectations during the COVID-19 crisis. The rise in dispersion of earnings forecasts can be explained by the introduction of lockdown measures, which had a particularly adverse impact on the travel sector....

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the relationship between sovereigns and banks—the so-called sovereign-bank nexus—in emerging market economies to the fore as bank holdings of domestic sovereign debt have surged. This paper examines the empirical relevance of this nexus to assess how it...

This paper analyzes the dramatic rise in U.S. inflation since 2020, which we decompose into a rise in core inflation as measured by the weighted median inflation rate and deviations of headline inflation from core. We explain the rise in core with two factors, the tightening of the labor market...

Using a unique representative panel survey of Vietnamese enterprises in 2020, we find that the pandemic and associated government support package had a heterogenous impact across firms. The government support package, particularly tax cuts and deferrals, helped alleviate short term stress, but...