US federal transfers to individuals are large, countercyclical, vary geographically, and are often credited for helping stabilize regional economies. This paper estimates the short-run effects of these transfers using plausibly exogenous regional variation in temporary stimulus packages and...

This paper analyzes the impact of Covid-19 and uncooperative trade policies on world food markets. It quantifies the initial shock due to the pandemic under the assumption that products that are more labor intensive in production are more affected through workers' morbidity and containment...

As COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc across the world, researchers are attempting to quantify the economic fallout from the pandemic as it continues to unfold. Estimating the economic impacts of a prevailing pandemic is fraught with uncertainties about the epidemiology of the disease and the...

This paper proposes a leading indicator, the "Google Mobility Index," for nowcasting monthly industrial production growth rates in selected economies in Latin America and the Caribbean. The index is constructed using the Google COVID-19 Community Mobility Report database via a Kalman filter. The...

This paper examines cross-country evidence of how the Covid-19 pandemic spread and the mortality rates associated with preexisting vulnerabilities, the government's mobility restriction policy, institutions (democracy), and culture (individualistic culture and trust). Preexisting vulnerabilities...

This paper evaluates the global welfare consequences of increases in mortality and poverty generated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Increases in mortality are measured in terms of the number of years of life lost (LY) to the pandemic. Additional years spent in poverty (PY) are conservatively...

This paper reviews the emerging big data literature applied to urban transportation issues from the perspective of economic research. It provides a typology of big data sources relevant to transportation analyses and describes how these data can be used to measure mobility, associated...