We find UK “local lockdowns” of cities and small regions, focused on limiting how many people a household can interact with and in what settings, are effective in turning the tide on rising positive COVID-19 cases. Yet, by focusing on household mixing within the home, these local lockdowns...

We examine how the fear of COVID-19 contagion influences consumer expenditure patterns. We show that the consumption expenditure responses to the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic are significantly heterogeneous across generations. We find that the elderly spend less than the younger generation by...

This paper examines how households adjusted their consumption behavior in response to COVID-19 infection risk during the early phase of the pandemic. We use a monthly consumption survey specifically designed by the German Statistical Office covering the second wave of COVID-19 infections from...

We review early evidence on how household consumption behavior has evolved over the pandemic and how different groups of households have responded to fiscal stimulus programs. Due to the scarcity of evidence for Europe, our review focuses on evidence from the US. Notwithstanding the...

We evaluate Germany's temporary value-added tax (VAT) rate reduction as a tool to stimulate consumer spending during the Covid-19 pandemic using a comparative case study approach. We construct a credible counterfactual for Germany in a two-step procedure. First, we carry out a careful...

We evaluate Germany's temporary value-added tax (VAT) rate reduction as a tool to stimulate consumer spending during the Covid-19 pandemic using a comparative case study approach. We construct a credible counterfactual for Germany in a two-step procedure. First, we carry out a careful...

This paper exploits the variation in the unemployment rate of different occupations in the first part of the COVID-19 pandemic to analyze the response of consumption spending to unemployment risk. We find that earlier in the pandemic, higher unemployment risk did not reduce relative spending....

We study the response of daily household spending to the unexpected component of the COVID-19 pandemic, which we label as pandemic shock. Based on daily forecasts of the number of fatalities, we construct the surprise component as the difference between the actual and the expected number of...

During the Covid-19 pandemic, unemployment insurance (UI) benefits have taken on an unprecedented role in the United States economy. In May 2020, total UI benefits were equal to 14.6 percent of total wages, more than five times the Great Recession peak. This is due to two factors: first, the...