Search Results
Working Paper
The Slaughter of the Bison and Reversal of Fortunes on the Great Plains
In the late 19th century, the North American bison was brought to the brink of extinction in just over a decade. We show that the bison?s slaughter led to a reversal of fortunes for the Native Americans who relied on them. Once the tallest people in the world, the generations of bison-reliant people born after the slaughter were among the shortest. Today, formerly bison-reliant societies have between 20-40% less income per capita than the average Native American nation. We argue that federal Indian policy that limited out-migration from reservations and restricted employment opportunities to ...
Journal Article
Cell Phone Data Suggest Persistent Differences in Work from Home by Income, Race, and Education during the Pandemic
Social-distancing policies to combat the spread of COVID-19 led to an initial spike in work from home. We use high-frequency cell phone geolocation data to assess how work from home has evolved since then. We show that work from home declined as restrictions eased but remains above pre-pandemic levels. In addition, we find that differences across income, race, and education in work from home that emerged with the pandemic persist a year later.
Discussion Paper
Many Small Businesses in the Services Sector Are Unlikely to Reopen
The services sector was hit hard during the COVID-19 pandemic. Small businesses were particularly affected, and many of them were forced to close. We examine the state of these firms using micro data from Homebase (HB), a scheduling and time tracking tool that is used by around 100,000 businesses, mostly small firms, in the leisure and hospitality and retail industries. The data reveal that 35 percent of businesses that were active prior to the pandemic are still closed and that most have been inactive for twenty weeks or longer. We estimate that each additional week of being closed reduces ...
Discussion Paper
Understanding the Impact of COVID-19: The Top Five LSE Posts of 2020
An annual tradition at Liberty Street Economics is to present our most‑read posts of the year. Given the events of 2020, New York Fed economists and guest coauthors focused their analysis on the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, writing some seventy articles since March on the subject. Our leading posts, in terms of traffic, all touch on the theme in some way. Consider this space a hub for COVID-19 coverage for some time to come, and take a look back at the top five posts grabbing attention in 2020.
Report
Pandemics Change Cities: Municipal Spending and Voter Extremism in Germany, 1918-1933
We merge several historical data sets from Germany to show that influenza mortality in 1918-1920 is correlated with societal changes, as measured by municipal spending and city-level extremist voting, in the subsequent decade. First, influenza deaths are associated with lower per capita spending, especially on services consumed by the young. Second, influenza deaths are correlated with the share of votes received by extremist parties in 1932 and 1933. Our election results are robust to controlling for city spending, demographics, war-related population changes, city-level wages, and regional ...
Working Paper
Optimal Management of an Epidemic: Lockdown, Vaccine and Value of Life
This paper analyzes the optimal management of a pandemic (stay-at-home and vaccination policies) in a dynamic model. The optimal lockdown policies respond to the spread of the virus with significant restrictions to employment, followed by partial loosening before the peak of the epidemic. Upon the availability of a vaccine, the optimal vaccination policy has an almost bang-bang property, despite the loss of immunity of the vaccinated: vaccinate at the highest possible rate, and then rapidly converge to the steady state. The model illustrates interesting trade-offs as it implies that lower ...
Working Paper
Indian Residential Schools, Height, and Body Mass Post-1930
We study the effects of Canadian Indian residential schooling on two anthropometric measures of health during childhood: adult height and body weight. We use repeated cross sectional data from the 1991 and 2001 Aboriginal Peoples Survey and leverage detailed historical data on school closures and location to make causal inferences. We ?nd evidence that, on average, residential schooling increases adult height and the likelihood of a healthy adult body weight for those who attended. These effects are concentrated after the 1950s when the schools were subject to tighter health regulations and ...
Discussion Paper
Does China’s Zero Covid Strategy Mean Zero Economic Growth?
The Chinese government has followed a “zero covid strategy” (ZCS) ever since the world’s first COVID-19 lockdowns ended in China around late March and early April of 2020. While this strategy has been effective at maintaining low infection levels and robust manufacturing and export activity, its viability is being severely strained by the spread of increasingly infectious coronavirus variants. As a result, there now appears to be a fundamental incompatibility between the ZCS and the government’s economic growth objectives.
Working Paper
The Distributional Effects of COVID-19 and Optimal Mitigation Policies
This paper develops a quantitative heterogeneous agent–life cycle model with a fully integrated epidemiological model in which economic decisions affect the spread of COVID-19 and vice versa. The calibrated model is used to study the distributional consequences and effectiveness of mitigation policies such as a stay-at-home subsidy and a stay-at-home order. First, the stay-at-home subsidy is preferred because it reduces deaths by more and output by less, leading to a larger average welfare gain that benefits all individuals. Second, Pareto-improving mitigation policies can reduce deaths by ...
Discussion Paper
Will Capital Flows through Global Banks Support Economic Recovery?
While policymakers around the world have aggressively and swiftly reacted to the common negative economic shock from COVID-19, the timing and forms of policy responses in the economic recovery stage may be more geographically differentiated. The range in policy responses, along with variations in the financial health of banks, likely will affect the flow of international credit through global banks. In this post, we ask whether, based on historical precedent, global banks are likely to provide additional support to the economic recovery in the locations they serve.