The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, we introduce a daily vector autoregression (VAR) model for the US economy that allows discerning between lockdown shocks and a real business cycle shocks. With this methodology at hand, we then evaluate the impact of lockdown measures on economic...

We construct a news-based viral disease index and study the dynamic impact of epidemics on the world economy, using structural vector autoregressions. Epidemic shocks have persistently negative effects, both directly and indirectly, on affected countries and on world output. The shocks lead to a...