The COVID-19 pandemic has been an unprecedented shock to economic activity with abrupt and unexpected changes in household consumption behavior. This paper investigates how the spread of the pandemic and government interventions have affected consumer spending using daily card transaction data...

Early evidence on the pandemic’s effects pointed to women’s employment falling disproportionately, leading observers to call a “she-cession.” This paper documents the extent and persistence of this phenomenon in a quarterly sample of 38 advanced and emerging market economies. We show...

This paper investigates whether the COVID-19 recession led to an increase in demand for digital occupations in the United States. Using O*NET to capture the digital content of occupations, we find that regions that were hit harder by the COVID-19 recession experienced a larger increase in the...

We develop an integrated epidemiological-macroeconomic model to analyze the interplay between the COVID-19 outbreak and economic activity, as a tool for capacity building purposes. We illustrate a workhorse framework that combines a rich epidemiological model with an economic block to shed light...

We study the economic effects of information technology (IT) adoption during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using data on IT adoption covering almost three million establishments in the US, we find that technology adoption can partly shield the economy from the impact of the pandemic. In areas where...

This paper examines the economic effects of policies to contain Covid-19, by extracting lessons from Sweden's experience during the ‘Great Lockdown'. Sweden's approach was less stringent and based more on social responsibility than legal obligations compared to European peers. First, we...

Korea’s economy has leaped to high-income status thanks to several decades of sustained high growth. However, population aging and shifts in global demand provide headwinds for future growth and Korea now faces the effects of COVID-19 on economic activity. This paper asseses the expected drag...

This paper reviews the evidence on how households in Sub-Saharan Africa segment along consumption, income and earning dimensions relevant for quantitative macroeconomic policy models which incorporate heterogeneity. Key findings include the importance of home-grown food in the income and...

Do local fiscal multipliers depend on what the government purchases? We find that government purchases of services have larger effects on employment than spending on goods. Industries producing services are more labor-intensive than industries producing goods. This heterogeneity in labor...

Economic volatility remains a fact of life in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA). Household-level shocks create large consumption fluctuations, raising the incidence of poverty. Drawing on micro-level data from South Africa and Tanzania, we examine the vulnerability to shocks across household types (e.g....