Search Results
Early Mandated Social Distancing Does Best to Control COVID–19 Spread
Voluntary social distancing and a lack of compliance with mandated polices have led to unnecessarily high infection rates and death tolls in a number of countries.
Vaccines Were Key to Curbing COVID-19 in Europe; Other Measures Also Useful
Vaccine uptake was the most important factor in reducing effective transmission rates in 2021, though the other factors helped bring infections under control.
Working Paper
The valuation channel of external adjustment
International financial integration has greatly increased the scope for changes in a country's net foreign asset position through the "valuation channel" of external adjustment, namely capital gains and losses on the country's external assets and liabilities. We examine this valuation channel theoretically in a dynamic equilibrium portfolio model with international trade in equity that encompasses complete and incomplete asset market scenarios. By separating asset prices and quantities in the definition of net foreign assets, we can characterize the first-order dynamics of both valuation ...
Working Paper
Voluntary and Mandatory Social Distancing: Evidence on COVID-19 Exposure Rates from Chinese Provinces and Selected Countries
This paper considers a modification of the standard Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) model of epidemics that allows for different degrees of compulsory as well as voluntary social distancing. It is shown that the fraction of the population that self-isolates varies with the perceived probability of contracting the disease. Implications of social distancing both on the epidemic and recession curves are investigated and their trade off is simulated under a number of different social distancing and economic participation scenarios. We show that mandating social distancing is very effective ...
Working Paper
A Counterfactual Economic Analysis of COVID-19 Using a Threshold Augmented Multi-Country Model
This paper develops a threshold-augmented dynamic multi-country model (TG-VAR) to quantify the macroeconomic effects of COVID-19. We show that there exist threshold effects in the relationship between output growth and excess global volatility at individual country levels in a significant majority of advanced economies and in the case of several emerging markets. We then estimate a more general multi-country model augmented with these threshold effects as well as long-term interest rates, oil prices, exchange rates and equity returns to perform counterfactual analyses. We distinguish common ...
Working Paper
COVID-19 Time-Varying Reproduction Numbers Worldwide: An Empirical Analysis of Mandatory and Voluntary Social Distancing
This paper estimates time-varying COVID-19 reproduction numbers worldwide solely based on the number of reported infected cases, allowing for under-reporting. Estimation is based on a moment condition that can be derived from an agent-based stochastic network model of COVID-19 transmission. The outcomes in terms of the reproduction number and the trajectory of per-capita cases through the end of 2020 are very diverse. The reproduction number depends on the transmission rate and the proportion of susceptible population, or the herd immunity effect. Changes in the transmission rate depend on ...
Working Paper
Social Distancing, Vaccination and Evolution of COVID-19 Transmission Rates in Europe
This paper provides estimates of COVID-19 effective reproduction numbers and explains their evolution for selected European countries since the start of the pandemic taking account of changes in voluntary and government-mandated social distancing, incentives to comply, vaccination and the emergence of new variants. Evidence based on panel data modeling indicates that the diversity of outcomes that we document may have resulted from the non-linear interaction of mandated and voluntary social distancing and the economic incentives that governments provided to support isolation. The importance ...
Working Paper
Social Distancing, Vaccination and Evolution of COVID-19 Transmission Rates in Europe
This paper provides estimates of COVID-19 transmission rates and explains their evolution for selected European countries since the start of the pandemic taking account of changes in voluntary and government-mandated social distancing, incentives to comply, vaccination and the emergence of new variants. Evidence based on panel data modeling indicates that the diversity of outcomes that we document may have resulted from the non-linear interaction of mandated and voluntary social distancing and the economic incentives that governments provided to support isolation. The importance of these ...
Working Paper
Social Distancing, Vaccination and Evolution of COVID-19 Transmission Rates in Europe
This paper provides estimates of COVID-19 effective reproduction numbers worldwide and explains their evolution for selected European countries since the start of the pandemic, taking account of changes in voluntary and government-mandated social distancing, incentives to comply, vaccination and the emergence of mutations. Evidence based on panel data modeling indicates that the diversity of outcomes that we document resulted from the non-linear interaction of mandated and voluntary social distancing and the economic incentives that governments provided to support isolation, with no one ...
Journal Article
Sudden Stops and COVID-19: Lessons from Mexico’s History
The COVID-19 pandemic produced a sharp contraction in capital flows in emerging markets during the spring of 2020. Such contractions are known as “sudden stops” and historically have been associated with significant downturns in a country’s economic activity. Evidence from Mexico’s financial crisis history suggests that sudden stops tend to exhibit a common pattern: the crisis lasts one to two years before a rapid but partial recovery, followed by years of protracted stagnation.