This article analyses the reopening process of countries in Europe and Central Asia after the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and provides evidence on the effects of different reopening trajectories and their timing and speed on economic recovery. The analysis indicates that countries that adopted a gradual, staged reopening experienced stronger economic recovery compared with the countries that rushed into lifting the restrictive measures before the pandemic was under control. Postponing lifting the restrictions until after the pandemic's peak was reached has a positive impact on economic activity. Governance also matters: a higher level of trust in government is associated with increased economic activity among countries that carried out a gradual reopening process. There is also suggestive evidence that providing people objective data on the progress of the pandemic may speed up the recovery process. (JEL codes: D14, E21, and G51).

Based on a survey (7-13 April 2020) we evaluate the reaction of Swiss firms towards the COVID-19 crisis. Firms show little pro-active reactions towards the crisis, but decrease their business activities. The firms in the survey report that the decline in foreign demand is the single most important reason for their deteriorating business situation. Firms that faced a more difficult business situation before the crisis are affected more severely during the crisis. Moreover, we investigate the impact of the Swiss federal loan program (Bundeshilfe) on the business activities. To this end, we develop a stylized theoretical model of financially constrained heterogeneous firms. We find that policy makers face a trade-off between immediate higher unemployment rates and long-term higher public spending. The former arises from a combination of a too strong economic impact of the COVID-19 lockdown (demand drop) and too low levels of loans provided. Nevertheless, providing (too) high levels of loans to firms creates zombie firms that are going to default in the future leading to an increase in public spending. (JEL codes: D22, D25, D84, and G33).

The outbreak of COVID-19 has affected men and women worldwide. The gender dimension of COVID-19 has attracted the attention of researchers and policymakers: while women seem to be less severely hit by the virus and are more compliant with the restricting rules imposed to reduce the spread of the contagion, they risk to suffer more the economic consequences of the pandemic, because they are more vulnerable on the labor market and because they are carrying on most of the burden of housework and childcare which increased substantially during the lockdown. Public policies are required to address the emergency and to deal with its gender implications. Anecdotal evidence suggests that women leaders have performed better than men in dealing with the emergency. This paper explores the evidence on the gender dimension of the pandemic under a new perspective proposed by Profeta (2020), focused on the double relationship between gender equality and public policy: on one side, I show which policies can support gender equality in times of COVID-19 and, on the other side, I explore whether women leadership can promote successful measures. While the evidence provided is only suggestive, future studies should assess causal relationships. (JEL codes: J16 and J18).

Many countries consider the lifting of restrictions of social contacts (RSC). We quantify the effects of RSC for Germany. We initially employ a purely statistical approach to predicting prevalence of Covid-19 if RSC had been upheld after 20 April. We employ these findings and feed them into our theoretical model. We find that the peak of the number of sick individuals would have been reached already end of April. The number of sick individuals would have fallen below 1000 at the beginning of July. If restrictions had been lifted completely on April 20, the number of sick should have risen quickly again from around 27 April. A balance between economic and individual costs of RSC and public health objectives consists in lifting RSC for activities that have high economic benefits but low health costs. In the absence of large-scale representative testing of CoV-2 infections, these activities can most easily be identified if federal states of Germany adopted exit strategies that across states.

One consequence of the rise in inequality witnessed over the past 40 years is its potentially negative impact on intergenerational mobility if parents at the bottom of the income distribution invest significantly less in their children's human capital. I consider whether public investments in children can potentially offset the inequality of private investments. Specifically, examining changes in public spending in 25 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries over the period 2000-2009, I find that increases in spending on health are most strongly associated with reductions in the importance of family background and declines in inequality in the production of child human capital as measured by the Program for International Student Assessment test scores among 15-year-olds. Public spending on family support, housing, and education are also moderately related. In contrast, increased spending on the elderly is associated with increases in the importance of parental background and inequality of child test scores. These results suggest that public investments in child human capital have the potential to offset the potentially negative impact of increasing income inequality on intergenerational mobility and inequality of the next generation. Further research firmly establishing a causal relationship is needed.

In this article, we address the long-run associations between childhood shocks and health in late adulthood. Applying a life-course approach and data from SHARE, we estimate direct and indirect relations of shocks like relocation, dispossession, or hunger and health outcomes after 50 years of age. Having lived in a children's home, in a foster family, or having suffered a period of hunger turn out to be the most detrimental. Using a finite mixture model, which allows to classify the correlations between shocks and later health into a priori unknown groups, we show that some adverse shocks show opposite relations for specific groups. (JEL codes: J1, I12, J13).

This paper provides new evidence that family planning programs are associated with a decrease in the share of children and adults living in poverty. Our research design exploits the county roll-out of U.S. family planning programs in the late 1960s and early 1970s and examines their relationship with poverty rates in the short and longer-term in public census data. We find that cohorts born after federal family planning programs began were less likely to live in poverty in childhood and that these same cohorts were less likely to live in poverty as adults.