The COVID-19 pandemic has led many governments to implement lockdowns. While lockdowns may help to contain the spread of the virus, they may result in substantial damage to population well-being. We use Google Trends data to test whether the lockdowns implemented in Europe and America led to...

The COVID-19 pandemic represents the largest world-wide shock in at least a decade. Moreover, the spread of the virus has been highly heterogeneous. This paper investigates the role of social capital as a potential mediating factor for the spread of the COVID-19 virus. On one hand, higher social...

Using weekly variation from April 23 to June 23, we exploit the surge in unemployment over the corona-virus pandemic to identify the effects on mental health outcomes and the role of marital status as a protective factor for households. We find that married respondents are 1-2 percentage points...

The COVID-19 pandemic has led many governments to implement lockdowns. While lockdowns may help to contain the spread of the virus, they may result in substantial damage to population well-being. We use Google Trends data to test whether the lockdowns implemented in Europe and America led to...

It is politicians who have to decide when to release the lockdown, and in what way. In doing so, they have to balance many considerations (as with any decision). Often the different considerations appear incommensurable so that only the roughest of judgements can be made. For example, in the...

The COVID-19 pandemic has led many governments to implement lockdowns. While lockdowns may help to contain the spread of the virus, they may result in substantial damage to population well-being. We use Google Trends data to test whether the lockdowns implemented in Europe and America led to...

We use quarterly panel data from the COME-HERE survey covering five European countries to analyse three facets of the experience of loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, in terms of prevalence, loneliness peaked in April 2020, followed by a U-shape pattern in the rest of 2020, and then...