This study examines the political factors associated with the implementation of a benefit payment policy in Japan during the COVID-19 crisis. The Japanese government announced a universal cash payment program in April 2020, but the payment date differed across localities. This study estimates the correlation between this timing and local politicians' characteristics, finding that local governments with mayors elected unopposed tended to start making payments comparatively early. As such, mayors elected uncontested may be able to mobilize resources within government offices to execute programs such as the Special Fixed Benefit program in Japan, which attracted public attention.

COVID-19 pandemic has substantially altered socioeconomic conditions around the world. While numerous existing studies analyze the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic among developed states, little is known about its effects on people's lives and social discrepancies in emerging economies. To this end, we empirically analyze the 2020 Indonesian Labor Force Survey data, hypothesizing that COVID-19 has given idiosyncratic risks and impacts on people by gender, age, education, occupation and regions. We find that income loss and job loss are prominent among males, younger and less educated people as well as among self-employed and part-time non-agricultural workers. These tendencies are not pronounced for people enjoying high income and mobility, but tend to be evident for urban residents and those having dependents. Notably, self-employed people have the highest risk of losing income, while part-time urban workers face the highest probability of losing their jobs. The propensity score matching method also demonstrates that these losses are most evident for the regions susceptible to COVID-19. Overall, we suggest that socioeconomically disadvantaged groups require additional support to strengthen their resilience in the face of exogenous shocks, such as the one caused by the global coronavirus pandemic.

This paper employs a difference-in-differences strategy to examine the causal effect of exposure to the COVID-19 pandemic on interpersonal trust amidst zero-COVID policies in China. Using a nationally representative panel survey, we find that COVID-19 exposure leads to a decrease in the levels of generalized trust. We also show that the change in interpersonal trust varies across domains. Specifically, COVID-19 exposure significantly decreases trust in parents, neighbors, and local government officials, but has small and insignificant effects on trust in doctors, strangers, and Americans. Empirical tests suggest that changes in income and physical health status are not likely to be potential channels. We provide some evidence for the mechanism of deteriorated mental health status and pessimistic expectations.

The COVID-19 pandemic severely disrupted international trade, leading countries to grapple with product shortages and firms to experience major supply chain issues. These challenges increased production costs and significantly contributed to lower trade and higher inflation. In this paper, we examine the impact of COVID-19 on Chinese trade through its two main trading partners: Japan and the US. By differentiating products by product type and processing status, we find evidence that products in the middle of the global supply chain were most affected by the pandemic and that the severity of the shock depends on the partner country's role in the global supply chain. Additionally, we find that Chinese exports are more impacted than Chinese imports, regardless of processing status. These findings are largely consistent with economic theory. Understanding that the effects of global shocks vary by product and country will help guide policies that minimize supply chain disruptions.

This paper estimates how strongly COVID-19 containment policies have impacted aggregate economic activity. We use a difference-in-differences methodology to estimate how containment zones of different severity across India impacted district-level nighttime light intensity, as well as household income and consumption. From May to July 2020, nighttime light intensity was 9.1 % lower in districts with the most severe restrictions compared with districts with the least severe restrictions, which could imply between 5.8 % and 6.6 % lower GDP. Nighttime light intensity was only 1.6 % lower in districts with intermediate restrictions. The differences were largest in May during the graded lockdown, and tapered in June and July. Lower house-hold income and consumption corresponding to zone-wise restrictions corroborate these results. Stricter containment measures had larger impacts in districts with greater population density, older residents, and more services employment. The large magnitudes of the findings suggest that governments should carefully consider the economic costs of country-wide pandemic containment policies while weighing the trade-offs against public health benefits. Keywords: Containment policies, COVID-19, Nighttime lights, India.

Using nationally representative income and expenditure data from South Korea, we show that single-person households suffered a much greater decrease in household income and expenditure compared to multi-persons households during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Negative effects on income were largest for the single-person households in ages 50-64, mostly driven by decreases in earned income rather than business income. There was no corresponding decrease in consumption expenditures, however, other than on transportation expenditure for young men. Notably, there were significant decreases in non-consumption expenditures that are related to formal and informal consumption-smoothing mechanisms, such as spending on insurances, pensions, and household transfers. Our findings highlight the disproportionately negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the middle-aged single-person households. With reduced spending on consumption-smoothing mechanisms, this group is likely to be even more vulnerable to negative income shocks in the future.

In this paper, we examine the impact of policy actions undertaken by governments during the COVID-19 pandemic on Consumer Price Index (CPI) in five major South Asian nations, namely, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Using panel fixed effects regression with robust standard errors, we show the relative importance of monetary and financial interventions on reducing CPI while fiscal interventions, direct grants and aid are insignificant. Further, delving into nature of policy interventions, our study finds evidence of negative impact of Credit Support, and Healthcare Support on CPI in South Asian nations. While our investigation is preliminary, it provides insights into additional understanding of effectiveness of policy actions on inflation targeting.

We examine the effectiveness of fiscal and monetary policy in mitigating the impact of COVID-19 in India using the NK-DSGE framework. In terms of policy effectiveness, our findings imply that expansionary monetary policy is effective in reviving economic growth both from the demand side and supply side. In contrast, expansionary fiscal policy is effective only from the supply side. Our findings recommend the implementation of optimal policy mix in a coordinated and staggered framework for effective mitigation of ill-effects of the COVID-19, such as reviving employment and capacity utilization to its pre-pandemic level with minimal inflationary effects.

The COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh, associated public health measures, and people's reactions were projected to have caused job losses among women, a decline in women's empowerment and reduced women's diet diversity. Using a November 2020 telephone survey to re-interview adult female respondents of a November 2019 in-person survey, contrary to expectations we find that more women found than lost jobs, and women's diet diversity increased over the year partly marked by the COVID-19 pandemic. We did not find evidence of a decline in women's involvement in food purchase decisions, nor women's autonomy over use of household income. The change in women's outside employment is neither statistically related to changes in women's involvement in food purchase decisions, changes women's autonomy over use of household income, nor changes in women's diet diversity. Change in women's involvement in food purchase decisions is positively related with change in women's diet diversity and change in women's autonomy over income use is negatively related with change in women's diet diversity.

In 2020, governments worldwide enforced lockdowns to contain the spread of COVID-19, severely impeding aspects of daily life such as work, school, and tourism. Consequently, numerous economic activities were affected. Before the COVID-19 outbreak, city-center housing markets in areas surrounding popular tourist attractions performed better than did suburban housing markets because of the output of the tourism industry. This study examines the changes in the performance of city-center and suburban housing markets in regions with popular tourist attractions after the lockdown. Specifically, the dynamics of city-center and suburban housing markets in Hangzhou, where West Lake is located, and the changes in the information transfer between these housing markets after the lockdown are explored. Transaction data from January 1, 2019 to September 30, 2020 are used to perform analysis, in which adjusted housing prices and asking prices are employed to measure market performance and sellers' pricing strategies, and transaction volume and time on the market are used to measure market liquidity and transaction frequency. The results reveal that the effects of lockdowns differ between city-center and suburban housing markets. After the lockdown, a substantial structural change is observed in the suburban housing market; the volatility risk of housing prices decreases substantially, causing an increase in transaction premiums. Housing prices and transaction volume increase in the city-center housing market after the lockdown; this is possibly because of the influence from the overall housing market booms. In addition, because sellers raise their asking prices and the transaction time is extended, the sellers in the city-center housing market are particularly influenced by the disposition effect. This leads to a reversal in the lead-lag relationship between the city center and suburban housing markets in terms of informativeness. Specifically, before the lockdown, the city-center market transfers information to the suburban market, but after the lockdown, the suburban market transfers information to the city-center market. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the world in many aspects; this paper finds that it will also change the development pattern of the real estate market in different locations.

This study examines the impact of the 2003 SARS epidemic on the total factor productivity (TFP) of Chinese industrial enterprises using a difference-in-differences (DID) approach. The results exhibit that SARS significantly reduces TFP by 3.12-5.81%, lasting for three to five years. Further, this impact is heterogeneous across industries. A significantly negative impact is found in labor intensive industries, while capital and technology intensive industries is less affected. Contrarily, a significantly positive impact is observed in those industries necessary for life and production. Mechanism tests show that the impact on TFP is caused by a reduction in labour productivity and a decrease in innovation investment after SARS outbreak. This study highlights the importance of more targeted policy on Covid-19 and similar epidemics both in industrial, national and international level.

Soon after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, many governments began extending financial and other forms of support to micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and their workers because smaller firms are more vulnerable to negative shocks to their supply chain, labor supply, and final demand for goods and services than larger firms. Since MSMEs are diverse, however, the severity of the pandemic's impact on them varies considerably depending on their characteristics. Using online survey data of MSMEs from eight developing economies in South, Southeast, and Northeast Asia, this paper attempts to deepen our understanding of the impact of the pandemic on MSMEs, especially their employment, sales revenue, and cash flow. It also characterizes those firms that began participating in online commerce and tries to determine how their use of online commerce and their employment are related in this difficult time. This paper also examines the government support that MSMEs have received and the extent to which it has satisfied their support needs.

This paper investigates the sleeplessness in Chinese cities during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. We provide first evidence of a link from daily COVID-19 cases resulting in sleep loss in a panel of Chinese cities. We use Wuhan, which was the first city to be completely locked down, as basis to present the result that sleeplessness has become a considerably serious issue owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. In using the intervention policy of various cities as exogenous shocks, we find that lockdown policies significantly increase the sleeplessness level of Chinese cities. In addition, the severity of COVID-19 pandemic significantly exacerbates the negative effect of lockdown policies on sleep quality in the city. Overall, this study indicates that policy makers should pay more attention to public mental health when citizens recover from COIVD-19 by investigating the unintended consequences of COVID-19 on sleeplessness level of cities.

In order to build a strong and sustainable recovery post the COVID-19 pandemic, we need to draw important observations from the growth experience of the past. In this context, this paper uses a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model that takes into account persistent growth rate shocks to decompose the Indian GDP into potential output and output gap. Apart from analysing the trajectory of potential output-output gap, it also examines their underlying drivers. The results suggest that a combined deceleration in neutral and investment-specific technology growth post 2016, brought down the potential growth to around 6 per cent in 2020Q1. The output gap also witnessed a persistent decline since 2018Q1, primarily due to weak demand and a rise in investment adjustment costs reflecting heightened stress in the investment and financial sectors. A forecasting exercise is also undertaken which shows that the estimates of output gap from the model possess competing inflation forecasting ability compared to HP filtered output gap.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has sent shock waves across the global stock markets. Several financial crises in the past too have had a global impact with their reach extending beyond the country of origin. The current study compares the contagion effect of four such crises viz. the Asian financial crisis, the US subprime crisis, the Eurozone debt crisis, and the currently ongoing Covid-19 crisis on Asian stock markets to understand which of these has had the most severe impact. It finds that among all the four crises, the US subprime crisis has been the most contagious for the Asian stock markets. The study also highlights the difference between severities of a liquidity crisis versus a real crisis and identifies the markets that remained insulated from all these crises, a finding which will be useful for portfolio managers in devising their asset allocation.

Global trade suffered a significant contraction in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and its growth is expected to remain below the pre-pandemic trend. Did the relative importance of countries in the world trade network change as a result of the pandemic? The answer to this question is particularly important for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries because of their relative importance in world trade as well as their strong trade linkages with China, where the COVID-19 virus originated. This paper examines how the world trade network has changed since the COVID-19 pandemic, with a particular focus on ASEAN countries. Tracking the changes in centrality from January 2000 to March 2021, we find no evidence for most ASEAN and major trading countries that centrality changed significantly after the pandemic began. Our results suggest the resilience of the trade pattern for these countries.

Using two complementary approaches, this study examines the deterioration of the Korean labor market during the first 10 months of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Applying the synthetic control method, we first find that the COVID-19 outbreak has eliminated 1.1 million jobs (4.2% of nonfarm employment) nationwide in April 2020. However, a difference-in-differences approach shows that local variation in COVID-19 intensity, which captures the "regional" effect of the pandemic, explains only 9% of the national shock. The portion of the regional effect remains low until December. This is mainly because the nationwide fear and policies such as social distancing measures also have a "common" effect on local economies. Our findings suggest that the COVID-19 shock may last long in the labor market due to this common effect unless the risk of infection is completely eliminated.

This study examines how economic and social activities in Asia were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, using the emissions of various air pollutants as representative measures of those activities. Our review of emissions data suggests that the amount of air pollutants emitted decreased in most subnational regions from 2019 to 2020. We also determined that economic and social activities have restarted in some regions in many countries. Moreover, we conduct regression analyses to identify the types of regions that restarted earlier. Regional characteristics are distinguished by employing a remotely sensed land cover dataset and OpenStreetMap. Results reveal that in the case of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) forerunners, economic and social activities in cropland, industrial estates, accommodations, restaurants, education, and public services have not yet returned to previous levels.

COVID-19 has had an enormous effect on labor markets globally. Economic restrictions, notably strict border controls and lockdowns, have led many workers to lose their jobs and forced many migrants to return to their homes or change their migration plans. While adverse effects on labor mobility are expected, variations in the prevalence of COVID-19 and governmental responses to the pandemic across countries are likely to influence workers' intentions to migrate in different ways. To understand the effects of pandemics on the international labor supply, we explore the impact of COVID-19 and the various economic restriction policies on job search behavior by considering cases from Southeast Asian countries using the difference-in-differences (DID) approach with data from Google Trends Index (GTI). We find that the search volume of queries related to the labor market dramatically increased over time following the outbreak of COVID-19. However, we do not observe any positive impact on the search volume related to emigration, regardless of the infection control measures in the host countries. Our results imply that the job insecurity increases after the imposition of lockdown in the respective countries. On the other hand, the expectation to migrate outside of the country, which requires preparation time and incurs high costs, does not seem to have increased in developing countries.

This paper uses 2018 data as a benchmark to build a numerical 26-country global general equilibrium model with trade cost and an endogenous trade imbalance structure. We assume that COVID-19 will increase the trade cost between countries and decrease labor supply in production. We use China's trade data from January to April in 2020 to calibrate the influence level parameters and then simulate the trade effects of COVID-19 in China, the EU, the US, and the world. Our simulation results find that all countries' trade and exports will be significantly hurt by the pandemic. Due to the trade diversion effect and the price growth effect, some countries will see an increase in import trade. Comparatively, the pandemic has the most negative impact on global trade, followed by the EU, the US, and China. As the pandemic deepens, the negative impact on trade will increase. The worldwide pandemic has the most significant impact on US trade, with an effect about 1.5 times that of the average world effect.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has generated serious challenges for the world economy, including cross-border foreign direct investment (FDI). China's inward FDI (IFDI) and outward FDI (OFDI) are also facing unprecedented risks and challenges. This paper first clarifies the timelines of the pandemic evolving in China, the US, and the rest of the world. It then reflects on China's past development process of IFDI and OFDI, noting the growth of IFDI and highlighting the risks and challenges for OFDI during and after the pandemic. Empirical evidence for the impact of COVID-19 on FDI is set out. Policy recommendations are then made regarding China's latest development strategy using the so-called to sustain its economic growth with respect to cross-border FDI.