Uncertainty before and during COVID-19: A survey
This survey features three parts. The first one reviews the most recent literature on the relationship between domestic (i.e., country-specific) uncertainty and the business cycle, and offers ten main takeaways. The second part surveys contributions to the fast-growing strand of the literature that focuses on the macroeconomic effects of uncertainty spillovers and global uncertainty. The last part presents contributions on the role played by uncertainty during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A literature review of the economics of COVID-19
The goal of this piece is to survey the developing and rapidly growing literature on the economic consequences of COVID-19 and the governmental responses, and to synthetize the insights emerging from a very large number of studies. This survey: (i) provides an overview of the data sets and the techniques employed to measure social distancing and COVID-19 cases and deaths; (ii) reviews the literature on the determinants of compliance with and the effectiveness of social distancing; (iii) mentions the macroeconomic and financial impacts including the modelling of plausible mechanisms; (iv) summarizes the literature on the socioeconomic consequences of COVID-19, focusing on those aspects related to labor, health, gender, discrimination, and the environment; and (v) summarizes the literature on public policy responses.
Rural-urban migration in economic development
"This paper provides a review of the theoretical literature on rural-urban migration in contemporary LDCs [less developed countries]. The paper begins with a brief discussion of the Lewis model before going on to discuss the Todaro and the Harris-Todaro models and the large literature which these models have spawned. The question of job search in the context of migration and the role of family members in migration decisions are considered next. The paper then takes a closer look at the Informal sector and also sets out alternative migration functions to the ones usually employed in the literature."
The emergence of migration theory and a suggested new direction
"The literature on internal labour migration is surveyed using a four-fold taxonomic scheme. The potential migrant, as presented in the existing literature, can be viewed as a supplier of labour, an investor in human capital and a consumer of regional amenities such as public goods. The paper develops a fourth approach which treats the household, rather than the individual, as the migrating unit and which views the potential migrant as a producer of home produced commodities. The continuities as well as the contrasts between the four approaches are discussed in the paper."