We evaluate the 1968 H3N2 Flu pandemic’s economic cost in a cross-section of 52 countries. Using excess mortality rates as a proxy for the country-specific severity of the pandemic, we find that the average mortality rate (0.0062% per pandemic wave) was associated with declines in consumption...

Several country-level studies have identified long-term adverse effects of in-utero exposure to the 1918 influenza pandemic (also known as the Spanish Flu) on economic outcomes. In-utero conditions are theoretically linked to adult health and socio-economic status through the fetal origins...

We develop an analytically tractable method to estimate the fraction of unreported infections in epidemics with a known epicenter and estimate the number of unreported COVID-19 infections in the US during the first half of March 2020. Our method utilizes the covariation in initial reported...