This paper examines the causal impact of diagnostic efficiency on the COVID-19 pandemic in China. Using an instrumental variable approach, we show that a 1-day decrease in the time taken to confirm the first case in a city publicly led to 9.4% and 12.7% reductions in COVID-19 prevalence and...

In the light of fears that the SARS-CoV-2 virus might be transmitted via cash – fears that were stoked by statements in the media and from public authorities – this paper aims to address the following issues: (1) to provide a descriptive account of the change in the circulation of euro...

Objective: To analyze the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on non-COVID-19 healthcare utilization in Mexico, including oral health, mental health, communicable diseases, health check-up, chronic degenerative diseases, postpartum care, prenatal care, and family planning.Methods: We use...

This paper investigates the way in which the COVID-19 pandemic has changed an important aspect of everyday life, viz. how people make payments. The empirical study is based on a survey of over 5,000 respondents from 22 European countries. It shows that consumers who had been making cashless...

High inflation rates, deep recessions, currency devaluations and historically low interest rates: all have been frequent phenomena in Latin America and Chile and could reappear permanently if monetary and fiscal policies are not properly managed. Macro and microeconomic stability is never fully...

This paper studies how people make decisions over preventive behaviors under ambiguity (i.e., Knightian uncertainty) where they do not even know the probability of a loss. In the context of the current COVID-19 pandemic, scientific uncertainty makes it hard to evaluate not only whether one will...

Lockdowns and voluntary social distancing led to significant reduction in people's mobility. Yet, there is scant evidence on the heterogeneous effects across segments of the population. Using unique mobility indicators based on anonymized and aggregate data provided by Vodafone for Italy,...

We use data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS) to compare measures of socioeconomic inequality in psychological distress, measured by the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), before (Waves 9 and the Interim 2019 Wave) and during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic (April to July...