This essay focuses on the role of patents in relation to a potential global crisis such as an influenza pandemic or other public health crisis. I argue that patent rights will be largely ignored during an epidemic and that any post-crisis compensation would likely be low when compared to...

We propose in this paper a simulation framework of pandemic in financial system composed of banks, asset markets and interbank markets. This framework aims at complementing the usual stress-test strategies that evaluate the impact of shocks on individual balance-sheets without taking into...

We assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on consumption indicators by estimating the effects of government-mandated containment measures and of the willingness of individuals to voluntarily physically distance to prevent contagion. To do this, we use weekly panel regressions across Canadian...

This paper features an analysis of cryptocurrencies and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their effectiveness as a portfolio diversification tool and explores the correlations between the continuously compounded returns on Bitcoin, Ethereum and the S&P500 Index using a variety of parametric...

As the economic disruptions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic increased in March 2020, there was a global dash-for-cash by investors. This selling pressure occurred across advanced sovereign bond markets and caused a deterioration in market functioning, leading to central bank interventions....