A universal testing and isolation policy is the most viable way to vanquish a pandemic. Its implementation requires: (i) an epidemiological rather than clinical approach to testing, sacrificing accuracy for scalability, convenience and speed; and (ii) state intervention to ramp up production,...

We study how household concerns about their future financial situation may affect the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) during the COVID-19 pandemic. We use a representative survey of UK households to compute the MPC from a hypothetical transfer of pound 500. We find that household...

We use UK transaction-level data during the Covid-19 pandemic to study whether mortgage payment holidays (PH) can act as a mechanism for smoothing household consumption following negative aggregate shocks. Our results suggest that mortgage PH were accessed by both households with pre-existing...

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an unprecedented shock to firms with adverse consequences for existing productive capacities. At the same time, digitalization has increasingly been touted as a key pathway for mitigating economic losses from the pandemic, and we expect firms facing digital...

This article documents recent developments in emerging markets in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, assesses their prospects and challenges, and discusses appropriate policy settings for the medium term. It argues that EM policymakers' ability to grapple with an incomplete and uneven...

We analyze the medium-term macroeconomic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and associated lock-down measures on low-income countries. We focus on the impact over the medium-run of the degradation of health and human capital caused by the pandemic and its aftermath, exploring the trade-offs between...

We examine how the repo market operates during liquidity stress by applying network analysis to novel transaction-level data of the overnight gilt repo market including the COVID-19 crisis. During this crisis, the repo network becomes more connected, with most institutions relying on existing...

We study the impact of the COVID-19 recession on capital structure of publicly listed U.S. firms. Our estimates suggest leverage (Net Debt/Asset) decreased by 5.3 percentage points from the pre-shock mean of 19.6 percent, while debt maturity increased moderately. This de-leveraging effect is...

The COVID-19 pandemic crisis has severely shocked the commercial real estate (CRE) sector, which could have important implications for macro-financial stability going forward because of the large size of the sector and its strong interconnectedness with the real economy. Using a novel...

This paper empirically examines the effects of fiscal policy measures during the COVID-19 pandemic, using a novel database of daily fiscal policy announcements-classified by type of fiscal measure-and high-frequency economic indicators for 52 countries from January 1 to December 31, 2020. The...