Phys .org: New tool can help predict the next financial bubble. “An international team of interdisciplinary researchers has identified mathematical metrics to characterize the fragility of financial markets. Their paper ‘Network geometry and market instability’ sheds light on the higher-order architecture of financial systems and allows analysts to identify systemic risks like market bubbles or crashes.”
Vox EU: Economic preparation for the next pandemic. “The COVID-19 pandemic is the first time in history that closing entire economies has been used as a medical tool, simultaneously and worldwide. This column argues that such ‘pandonomics’ cannot be repeated during future pandemics that are sure to come – the costs are too heavy. Since lockdowns are very costly, future economic non-pharmaceutical interventions need to be designed more intelligently, helping the economy to restructure and support the transition from a basically ignorant and domestically oriented society into a pandemic-aware one.”
INSEAD Knowledge: What Yelp Reviews Can Tell Us About the State of the Economy. “In a paper forthcoming in Big Data for Twenty-First Century Economic Statistics published by the US National Bureau of Economic Research, we show that Yelp’s crowdsourced data can help measure economic activity at the local level in close to real time, in contrast with official data that is often published years after. Changes in the number of businesses and restaurants reviewed on Yelp can help ‘nowcast’ changes in the corresponding official statistics before they are released. In short, sources like Yelp could complement official data in business and policymaking.”
New York Times: 17 Reasons to Let the Economic Optimism Begin. “Predictions are a hard business, of course, and much could go wrong that makes the decades ahead as bad as, or worse than, the recent past. But this optimism is not just about the details of the new pandemic relief legislation or the politics of the moment. Rather, it stems from a diagnosis of three problematic mega-trends, all related.”
Route Fifty: Economists: Biden’s $1,400 Covid-19 Checks May be Great Politics, but it’s Questionable Economics. “The coronavirus package contains a lot of provisions that will help struggling Americans, and we understand why the checks are so popular – with 78% support among adults in a recent survey. No one turns down extra money, after all. But as economists, we also believe that these direct payments make little economic sense – even with the lower income threshold. And this is true whether you think the purpose of the checks is relief or stimulus.”
The Invisible Hand: Personal Income, Consumer Spending rise significantly with the help of federal aid. “Personal income surged in January as Americans received $600 stimulus checks, leading to new optimism about the nation’s recovery from the pandemic. The monthly report issued by the Bureau of Economic Analysis for January noted a personal income increase of 10%, the second largest on record, was aided by federal stimulus checks and a $300 a week boost to unemployment benefits. Consumer spending had an increase of 2.4%, while the savings rate continued to rise at an extraordinary rate topping 20.5% for the month. ”
Florida International University: New tool tracks COVID economic recovery in South Florida. “The monthly COVID Economic Recovery Index, developed by researchers at the FIU Jorge M. Pérez Metropolitan Center, is aimed at assisting local policymakers and economic and community development officials in strategy and program development.”
Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University: Interactive Tool Illustrates The Disparate Economic Impacts Of The Pandemic. “It’s been well-documented that households of color, especially those who rent or have lower incomes, have been particularly hard-hit, economically, by the pandemic. Last November, in conjunction with our State of the Nation’s Housing report, we released an interactive tool which included data from the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey through late September. Updating the tool to include the subsequent six waves of data from the survey, we see that those trends continued through the end of the year, and conditions overall worsened for both renters and homeowners.”
BBC: Japan’s economy shrinks 4.8% in 2020 due to Covid. “The economy beat expectations to grow by 3% between October and December compared to the same period in 2019. But growth was considerably slower than in the previous quarter, when the economy expanded 5.3%. Japan’s economy shrank 4.8% over the full year, its first contraction since 2009.”
BBC: Coronavirus: How the pandemic has changed the world economy. “The coronavirus pandemic has reached almost every country in the world. Its spread has left national economies and businesses counting the costs, as governments struggle with new lockdown measures to tackle the spread of the virus. Despite the development of new vaccines, many are still wondering what recovery could look like. Here is a selection of charts and maps to help you understand the economic impact of the virus so far.”
Vox EU: “Covid Economics”: A new kind of publication. “From early March, it became clear that economists around the world, like everyone else, were mesmerised by the Covid-19 pandemic and trying to make sense of the unfolding events. This column describes how the tradition of pre-prints in physics and the medical sciences inspired the creation of CEPR’s ‘Covid Economics: Vetted and Real-Time Papers’. Beyond its contribution to a faster understanding of the pandemic, the Covid Economics experiment may help the economics profession think about how research is published.”
BBC: Canada unveils largest economic relief package since WW2. “Canada’s federal government will spend C$100bn ($77bn, £58bn) to kick start the country’s post-pandemic economy. It is ‘the largest economic relief package for our country since the Second World War’, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said on Monday.”
Opportunity Insight: The Economic Impacts of COVID-19: Evidence from a New Public Database Built Using Private Sector Data. “We build a publicly available database that tracks economic activity at a granular level in real time using anonymized data from private companies. We report daily statistics on consumer spending, business revenues, employment rates, and other key indicators disaggregated by ZIP code, industry, income group, and business size. Using these data, we study how COVID-19 affected the economy by analyzing heterogeneity in its impacts.”
American Economic Association: Epidemiology’s Time of Need: COVID-19 Calls for Epidemic-Related Economics. “The COVID-19 pandemic has catapulted scientific conversations and scientific divisions into the public consciousness. Epidemiology and economics have long operated in distinct silos, but the COVID-19 pandemic presents a complex and cross-disciplinary problem that impacts all facets of society. Many economists have recognized this and want to engage in efforts to mitigate and control the pandemic, but others seem more interested in attacking epidemiology than attacking the virus. As an epidemiologist, I call upon economists to join with us in combating COVID-19 and in preventing future pandemics.”
CNN: Retail sales grew less than expected in October, as economists worry about a ‘difficult winter’. “US retail sales grew at a slower pace than economists had predicted last month — prompting worries about a ‘difficult winter’ with lower consumer spending before a recovery next year. Retail sales increased by 0.3% to $553.3 billion on a seasonally adjusted basis in October, the Census Bureau reported on Tuesday. That’s below expectations of a 0.5% increase, and it’s down from a revised 1.6% in September.”
