The COVID-19 crisis seriously impacted the global economy and supply chain system. Unlike previous studies, this paper examines the risk spillover effects within the supply chain system rather than between financial and other specific industries. The hypotheses are proposed by developing and simulating an agent-based model; the copula-conditional value at risk model is employed to empirically validate these hypotheses in China during the COVID-19 crisis. The findings reveal that risks are transmitted and amplified from downstream, through midstream to upstream. Additionally, the financial industry amplifies the risk spillover from the midstream to the upstream and downstream. Moreover, the risk spillovers exhibit significant time-varying characteristics, and policy interventions can potentially mitigate the effect of such spillovers. This paper provides a theoretical basis and empirical evidence for risk spillover in supply chain systems and offers suggestions for industrial practitioners and regulators.

Although it is widely accepted that exchange rates are connected, what drives these connections remains an unsettled question. We examine the interconnections and spillovers of G10 currencies over the period from January 1, 2018 to June 17, 2021. We find that the Euro and Australian dollar serve as risk transmitters whereas the Japanese yen operates as a risk recipient. During the COVID-19 pandemic period, countries with higher infection cases experience currency depreciation and transmit more currency risk to others. In response to this crisis, the Fed adopted the large-scale asset purchase program that weakened the USD and increased the demand for high-yield currencies through the portfolio rebalancing channel. The appreciation of high-yield currencies further attracts carry trades and enhances their risk transmission to low-yield currencies. Furthermore, we provide evidence to show that the COVID-19 infection cases, the Fed's policy, and carry trades are crucial determinants of exchange rate spillovers.

This paper provides a macro-micro modeling analysis of the ex-ante effects of COVID-19 mitigation and recovery policies on macroeconomic and distributional effects, particularly on female and male workers, income distribution, and poverty in Zimbabwe. With an emphasis on modeling gender-disaggregated labor markets and COVID-19 policy responses, the paper presents and combines the most recent data on poverty, gender, and the economy at the national level. The study finds that i) without any government mitigation measures, the gross domestic product will remain below business-as-usual levels; ii) poorer women are hardest hit because they are employed in sectors that are exposed and vulnerable to COVID-19 response measures; and iii) mitigation measures to counteract the negative effects of increases in poverty are effective only in the short term, and additional measures to sustain poverty reduction for the long term to sustain the poverty reductions are required. These results highlight the short-term versus long-term dilemma the government faces when contemplating responses to COVID-19.

We estimate the economic impacts of COVID-19 in the U.S. using a disaster economic consequence analysis framework implemented by a dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. This facilitates identification of relative influences of several causal factors as "shocks" to the model, including mandatory business closures, disease spread trajectories, behavioral responses, resilience, pent-up demand, and government stimulus packages. The analysis is grounded in primary data on avoidance behavior and healthcare parameters. The decomposition of the influence of various causal factors will help policymakers offset the negative influences and reinforce the positive ones during the remainder of this pandemic and future ones.

What were the economic effects of vaccination campaign, agents' adaptation to containment measures, and fiscal and monetary measures during the COVID-19 pandemic? To quantify these effects, we augment the ECB's macro-econometric model with an endogenous epidemiological block, providing one of the first institutional policy models with epidemiological elements. The model tracks closely actual pandemic developments by relying on detailed epidemiological data and by nesting a wide range of features, including vaccination campaigns, emergence of new variants and learning effects. Importantly, it includes an endogenous policy reaction function for containment measures, allowing counterfactual simulations. Our simulation results show that: (i) agents' adaptation to containment measures over time was key in reducing negative macroeconomic consequences of lockdowns, (ii) the vaccination campaign slowed down infection rates and hospitalizations, enabling a relaxation of containment measures and avoiding a sharp double dip in economic activity and (iii) complementary fiscal and monetary policy interventions provided support to the economy.

Before vaccines became commonly available, compliance with nonpharmaceutical only preventive measures offered protection against COVID-19 infection. Compliance is therefore expected to have physical health implications for the individual and others. Moreover, in the context of the highly contagious coronavirus, perceived noncompliance can increase the subjective risk assessment of contracting the virus and, as a result, increase psychological distress. However, the implications of (public) noncompliance on the psychological health of others have not been sufficiently explored in the literature. Examining this is of utmost importance in light of the pandemic's elevated prevalence of depressive symptoms across countries. Using nationally representative data from South Africa, we explore the relationship between depressive symptoms and perceived noncompliance. We examine this relationship using a double machine learning approach while controlling for observable selection. Our result shows that the perception that neighbors are noncompliant is correlated with self-reported depressive symptoms. Therefore, in the context of a highly infectious virus, noncompliance has detrimental effects on the wellbeing of others.

The rising concerns about climate change and environmental degradation have urged various stakeholder to focus on sustainable investments that are facing a drag from the Covid-19 pandemic. Since environmental and Covid-19 challenges are global, it is critical to assess the interlinkages of sustainable investments. In this research, we employ the dependence, centrality, and dynamic network approach to examine the interdependence and its determinants across multiple countries between January 2009 and March 2021. The findings indicate France as the lead risk transmitter while Japan and Taiwan show risk reception among international markets. We observe an increase in dependence during economic turmoil notably in Covid-19 episode. The centrality network revealed the prominent significance of sustainable investments in the European countries that can be attributed to their exceptional efforts to combat the climate change. Finally, our results suggest that the volatility in gold prices is the key driver of interdependence of sustainable investments.

Following a pandemic disease outbreak, people travel to areas with low infection risk, but at the same time the epidemiological situation worsens as mobility flows to those areas increase. These feedback effects from epidemiological conditions to inflows and from inflows to subsequent infections are underexplored to date. This study investigates the two-way relationship between mobility flows and COVID-19 cases in a context of unrestricted mobility without COVID-19 vaccines. To this end, we merge data on COVID-19 cases in Spain during the summer of 2020 at the province level with mobility records based on mobile position tracking. Using a control function approach, we find that a 1% increase in arrivals translates into a 3.5% increase in cases in the following week and 5.6% ten days later. A simulation exercise shows the cases would have dropped by around 64% if the Second State of Alarm had been implemented earlier.

The ever-emerging environmental, social, and governance (ESG) concerns have received significant attention of policymakers, governments, regulation bodies, and investors. Considering the markets volatilities due to economic and financial uncertainties that can drive the informational price inefficiencies across the markets, this study compares the asymmetric price efficiency of regional ESG markets by using an asymmetric multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis before and during COVID-19 crisis. We then examine whether global factors influence the asymmetric efficiency of regional ESG markets. Our findings reveal that COVID-19 outbreak reduced the efficiency of regional ESG markets, except for Europe, which sustained its efficiency even during the pandemic. Moreover, global factors drive the efficiency of regional ESG markets significantly before and during COVID-19. A major implication of our findings stems from the fact that a contagion reduces the efficiency of the markets while stable economic conditions make those markets informationally efficient.

Understanding how rises in local prices affect food-related conflicts is essential for crafting adequate social welfare responses, particularly in settings with an already high level of food vulnerability. We contribute to the literature by examining how rises in local food prices and the lockdowns implemented to contain the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic affected conflict. We analyze real-time conflict data for 24 African countries during 2015-2020, welfare responses to COVID-19, changes in local food prices, and georeferenced data on areas with cultivation, oil, mines, all associated with differentiated risk of conflict. We find that the probability of experiencing food-related conflicts, food looting, riots, and violence against civilians increased shortly after the first strict lockdowns of 2020. Increases in local prices led to increases in violence against civilians. However, countries that timely provided more welfare assistance saw a reduction in the probability of experiencing these conflicts and in the number of associated fatalities. Our results suggest that providing urgent aid and assistance to those who need it can help reduce violence and save lives.

The COVID-19 pandemic adversely impacted economic activity, decreased corporate revenues, and magnified cash flow fluctuations. We study how Chinese listed firms' COVID exposure influences their cash holdings. A firm's COVID exposure is measured by its excess stock return responses to globally newly infected cases while controlling for market return. Firms increase (decrease) cash balances when their stock returns fall (increase) with COVID severity due to precautionary motives. Firms cannot predict the evolution of the pandemic, which impacts demand and supply and the cash conversion cycle. The deteriorating business condition also increases external financing costs with non-state-owned, low-growth, small, and firms without overseas businesses facing higher financial frictions. Furthermore, firms with good corporate governance tend to pre-empt operational uncertainty by increasing cash holdings. The increased cash holdings translate to more R&D expenditure but lesser capital investment. Our results remain robust to placebo tests, using excess cash and alternative COVID exposure measures.

Considering the severe economic impact of COVID-19, this study examines COVID-19's influence on the Chinese commodity market. The literature shows that COVID-19's influence in China during its abatement period has not been well investigated. We address this issue by the intraday analysis of the volatility from 16 commodity options contracts in the Chinese commodity options market over the period 2019-2021. We demonstrate that while the pandemic eased in China after its initial outbreak, it still significantly affected the volatility of Chinese agricultural commodities options. In contrast, its impacts on the volatility of options for petrochemicals, ores, and metals are negligible. This pattern reflects the role of pandemic-led supply disruptions affecting agricultural commodity prices as necessities, contributing to higher price volatility relative to non-agricultural commodities, which are less volatile.

The public acceptability of a policy is an important issue in democracies, in particular for anti-COVID-19 policies, which require the adherence of the population to be applicable and efficient. Discrete choice experiment (DCE) can help elicit preference ranking among various policies for the whole population and subgroups. Using a representative sample of the French population, we apply DCE methods to assess the acceptability of various anti-COVID-19 measures, separately and as a package. Owing to the methods, we determine the extent to which acceptability depends on personal characteristics: political orientation, health vulnerability, or age. The young population differs in terms of policy preferences and their claim for monetary compensation, suggesting a tailored policy for them. The paper provides key methodological tools based on microeconomic evaluation of individuals' preferences for improving the design of public health policies.

During a pandemic, each country (or region) is characterized by a status matrix indicating its positive cases, hospitalizations and deaths. A pandemic performance indicator is a real-valued mapping from the set of status matrices to the set of non-negative real numbers, whereby lower values stand for better performance. We show that four axioms together characterize a family of indicators arising from a weighted average of the incidence rate, morbidity rate and mortality rate. We use these indicators to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 in major countries worldwide.

We evaluate quartile rankings of countries during the Covid-19 pandemic using both official (confirmed) and excess mortality data. By December 2021, the quartile rankings of three-fifths of the countries differ when ranked by excess vs. official mortality. Countries that are 'doing substantially better' in the excess mortality are characterized by higher urban population shares; higher GDP/Capita; and higher scores on institutional and policy variables. We perform two regressions in which the ratio of Cumulative Excess to Official Covid-19 mortalities (E/O ratio) is regressed on covariates. In a narrow study, controlling for GDP/Capita and vaccination rates, by December 2021 the E/O ratio was smaller in countries with higher vaccination rates. In a broad study, adding institutional and policy variables, the E/O ratio was smaller in countries with higher degree of voice and accountability. The arrival of vaccines in 2021 and voice and accountability had a discernible association on the E/O ratio.

The COVID-19 pandemic posed an existential threat to European SMEs' financial resilience with significant consequences for the European economy. Using unique firm-level data on SME financing conditions, this paper proposes a new insolvency risk measure based on survey responses. We show that SME insolvency risk increased, on average, by approximately 21% during the pandemic. Problems with finding customers and the cost of production and labor contributed notably to SME insolvency risk during this period, and SMEs also saw deterioration in their access to finance. Innovation worked as a mitigating factor during the pandemic, and innovative SMEs were more resilient, maintained their client base, and saw favorable access to bank lending. Our results point out that SME innovation can prevent the number of insolvencies from rising significantly in the long term.

We test whether the COVID-19 pandemic has an ethnicity-differentiated (Indigenous vs non-Indigenous) effect on infant health in the Brazilian Amazon. Using vital statistics data we find that Indigenous infants born during the pandemic are 0.5% more likely to have very low birth weights. Access to health care contributes to health gaps. Thirteen percent of mothers travel to deliver their babies. For traveling mothers, having an Indigenous baby during the pandemic increases the probability of very low birth weight by 3%. Indigenous mothers are 7.5% less likely to receive adequate prenatal care. Mothers that travel long distances to deliver their babies and give birth during the pandemic are 35% less likely to receive proper prenatal care. We also find evidence that the pandemic shifts medical resources from rural to urban areas, which disproportionately benefits non-Indigenous mothers. These results highlight the need for policies to reduce health inequalities in the Amazon.

In the context of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, we investigate the effect of intercity high-speed railway (HSR) connections on intercity transmission of epidemics in the absence of government intervention. Intercity HSR connections increase the number of COVID-19 patients per 10,000 population by 0.029, accounting for 45% of the total infections. Our results remain intact in several robustness assessments. The total economic loss owing to HSR connections to Wuhan is estimated to be USD 0.62 billion. The internal mechanism demonstrates that intercity HSR connections increase intercity COVID-19 transmission by facilitating human mobility between cities. Based on intercity transportation connections, our findings can help the government predict the direction and scope of virus transmission and control the intercity transmission of epidemics.

The COVID-19-induced disruptions and the consequent government responses stretched the financial resources of firms. Recent studies document an increase in debt financing by firms during the pandemic. Using firm-level data from 61 countries, we deepen the understanding of the impact of the pandemic by examining the variation in loan and bond financing attributable to COVID-19-specific factors. Indicative of heightened precautionary needs, firms with higher pandemic exposure and those located in countries with stringent lockdowns have a higher propensity to raise debt. Furthermore, firms in industries less amenable to remote working also have a higher propensity to raise debt, but face higher financing costs compared to their peers. Reflective of opportunistic investment motives, firms that hold a relatively positive outlook have a greater likelihood of raising loan financing. The findings draw attention to the role of real-side factors and managerial motives that drive debt financing during a distress episode.

Governments want to know how effective COVID-19 anti-contagion policies and implemented economic stimulus measures have been to plan their short-run interventions. We condition on the state of the pandemic to assess the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions and economic stimulus policies on the excess unemployment insurance claims in the United States. We focus on weekly data between February 2020 and January 2021 and motivate our analysis by the theoretical framework of the second-wave SIR-macro type models to build a panel Vector AutoRegressive (VAR) specification. Non-pharmaceutical interventions become effective immediately and impact the labor market negatively. Economic stimulus takes about a month to turn effective and only partially eases the economic welfare losses. Health-related restrictive measures are primarily driven by the state of the pandemic. Economic support policies depend predominantly on the reaction of the labor market rather than the severity of the pandemic itself.

Short seller trading behavior attracts much attention, especially when negative shocks occur. Recent literature has focused on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, an unprecedented shock, but evidence on short sellers' reactions is quite scarce. This paper investigates how short sellers responded to the local COVID-19 pandemic in China. Empirical results show that greater numbers of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases in listed firms' headquarters locations are associated with more subsequent short selling of those firms. The results hold after addressing other potential concerns. In addition, the impact of the local COVID-19 pandemic on short selling is stronger for firms with weaker financial conditions, in more vulnerable industries, and with higher risks of a stock price crash. The impact is alleviated after lifting the lockdown restrictions in Wuhan and becomes insignificant in later outbreaks. Overall, our findings support the informational role of short sellers within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.