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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

This study has a twofold objective. The first one is an assessment of the efficiency of monetary and capital-based macroprudential policy, defined as imposing less interest costs to loan borrowers (nonfinancial corporations and households). The second objective of this paper is the assessment of...

The large-scale war between Russia and Ukraine has increased global oil prices, signaling a new era of macroeconomic shock management for both developed and developing countries. Consequently, this study investigates the passthrough effect of oil prices on domestic inflation in selected African...

We explore the pros and cons of two counterfactual analysis methodologies – the panel data approach (PDA) and the synthetic control method (SCM) through a discussion of the differences in their underlying assumptions and a series of simulations

A key concern in the design of education policies relates to the structure of incentives in accountability systems. This paper examines a school accountability program that provides financial support to low-performing schools but has no direct punishment scheme for recipients who do not exhibit...