We assess the causal impact of epidemic-induced lockdowns on health and macroeconomic outcomes and measure the trade-off between containing the spread of an epidemic and economic activity. To do so, we estimate an epidemiological model with time-varying parameters and use its output as...

This paper assesses the quantitative impact of government interventions on deaths related to the COVID-19 outbreak. Using daily data for 32 countries and relying on the stringency of the conducted policies, we find that the greater the strength of government interventions at an early stage, the...

The outbreak of COVID-19 in China during the Spring Festival of 2020 is an unprecedented event. Its impact has spread throughout the country and around the world. In order to explore the impact of the epidemic on China's economy, this paper starts with the analysis of the daily railway passenger...

This paper analyzes the effects of macro-economic conditions throughout life on the individual mortality rate. We estimate flexible duration models where the individual's mortality rate depends on current conditions, conditions earlier in life (notably during childhood), calendar time, age,...

Countries have employed a variety of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) in order to curtail the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the success of individual measures in reducing the number of infections remains controversial. This paper exploits a panel data set of 107 countries to estimate the...

In this note we revisit the paper by Fonseca et al. (Series 11: 83-103, 2020) who find that education has a positive effect on health. They use several compulsory schooling reforms as instruments for education. Our objective is to replicate this causal finding, so we start by thoroughly...

Increasing utilization of renewable energy sources (RES) is a priority worldwide. Germany has been a forerunner in the deployment of RES and has ambitious goals for the future. The support and use of renewables affects the economy: It creates business opportunities in sectors producing renewable...

This paper analyzes the importance of monetary and fiscal policy shocks in explaining US macroeconomic fluctuations, and establishes new stylized facts. The novelty of our empirical analysis is that we jointly consider both monetary and fiscal policy, whereas the existing literature only focuses...

This paper attempts to reconcile the contradictory findings in the debate over school resources and school effectiveness by highlighting the role of aggregation in the presence of omitted variables bias. While data aggregation for well- specified linear models yields unbiased parameter...