COVID-19 Thought Leadership Digest: June 24, 2020

COVID-19 Research and Insights from Chicago Booth Review

What percentage of the population has contracted COVID-19?
Chicago Booth's Panos Toulis suggests a statistical method that can help officials arrive at more accurate infection counts.

Why inflation could follow the crisis
Booth's Lubos Pastor explains why prices may creep up when the economy recovers and governments face their big new debts.

More than 50 million Americans can't return to work fully until schools reopen
A resumption of commercial activity without the return of childcare could add a new dimension to economic inequality, suggest Jonathan Dingel and Joseph S. Vavra.

How policy makers can help save jobs
Booth's Veronica Guerrieri says that helping businesses pay their employees provides social insurance and protects worker-employer links.

Fox News causes viewers to disregard social distancing
Research by professor Jean-Pierre Dubé and PhD candidate Shirsho Biswas examines the role of the media in determining how much credence people give to expert advice.

How much exactly have COVID-19 lockdowns affected the economy?
People living under lockdown orders feel they have little hope of a speedy recovery, suggests Booth's Michael Weber.

Follow CBR's COVID-19 page and social channels for the latest insights from Booth faculty.

Select Thought Leadership in the Media

What economists fear most during this recovery
June 23 | FiveThirtyEight
In IGM and FiveThirtyEight's survey of economists, 73 percent predicted a reverse radical—a steep drop followed by a quick partial recovery and a longer period of slower, mixed growth.

Coronavirus and personal debt: The Americans living on a 'knife edge'
June 22 | Financial Times
Amir Sufi argues that because of lower rates and forbearance, the probability of a default crisis is much lower than in 2008, but he sees another risk in all the new debt.

Will the COVID-19 recession be worse than the Great Recession of 2008?
June 22 | Good Morning America
Austan Goolsbee breaks down the biggest differences and similarities for both recessions, and offers hope on how our recovery now might be faster than in 2008.

Older workers may be retiring early because of the coronavirus
June 18 | AARP
Many older workers may be choosing early retirement during the COVID-19 crisis, according to a new paper by Michael Weber and coauthors.

White House left states on their own to buy ventilators. Inside their mad scramble.
June 15 | Kaiser Health News
Although HHS has contracts with several companies for nearly 200,000 ventilators by year's end, Daniel Adelman says it's important to have a backup plan.

To stay up-to-date with media mentions, follow Booth's In the News page and social channels.

COVID-19 Content across Booth

Chicago Booth Review’s Summer 2020 issue is now available online and in print. It features research and insights on the pandemic from Booth's Chang-Tai Hsieh, Ayelet Fishbach, Eugene F. Fama, Luigi Zingales, Raghuram G. Rajan, and many others.

Fear, lockdown, and diversion: Comparing drivers of pandemic economic decline 2020
In a new BFI working paper, Austan Goolsbee and Chad Syverson find that legal shutdown orders account for only a modest share of the massive changes to consumer behavior.

Initial impacts of the pandemic on consumer behavior: Evidence from linked income, spending, and savings data
Pascal Noel, Joseph S. Vavra, and coauthors find that spending declines early in the recession were primarily caused by direct effects of the pandemic, rather than labor market disruptions.

Pandemic Economics: Meet the COVID-19 consumer
On the latest episode of the BFI podcast, Michael Weber and Constantine Yannelis discuss the effect of pandemic and federal stimulus policies on spending.

COVID-19 data sources for researchers
The research team at the Rustandy Center is compiling data sets to track COVID-19 data by state, including stay-at-home orders, business regulations, and COVID-19 cases by zip code.

Booth Stories: Rising to the challenge
Booth alumni are making a difference amid the coronavirus pandemic: from supporting current students to funding research to mobilizing help where it's needed most.

COVID-19 and Amazon's Future: A webinar with Stacy Mitchell, Steven Kaplan, and Jacob Schlesinger
If you missed the Stigler Center's webinar exploring the impact of the COVID-19 crisis and its aftermath on Amazon and its competitors, you can watch the recording on the ProMarket blog.

BFI Working Papers

Who CARES? Evidence on the corporate tax provisions of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act from SEC filings
Booth's John Gallemore and coauthors find that tax provisions weren't likely to benefit firms in greater need of liquidity during the pandemic.

Did the Paycheck Protection Program hit the target?
PPP funds did not flow to areas more adversely affected by the pandemic, according to research by João Granja, Constantine Yannelis, and Eric Zwick.

COVID-19 is also a reallocation shock
Steven J. Davis and coauthors construct novel, forward-looking reallocation measures for jobs and sales.

Estimation of COVID-19 prevalence from serology rests: A partial identification approach
Research by Panos Toulis suggests that serology testing on a massive scale can give crucial information for future policy design.