A universal testing and isolation policy is the most viable way to vanquish a pandemic. Its implementation requires: (i) an epidemiological rather than clinical approach to testing, sacrificing accuracy for scalability, convenience and speed; and (ii) state intervention to ramp up production,...

Voluntary and government-mandated lockdowns in response to COVID-19 have caused causing drastic reductions in economic activity around the world. We present a parsimonious two-country-SIR model with some degree of substitutability between home and foreign goods, and show that trading partners'...

Epidemics may have social scarring effects, increasing the likelihood of social unrest. They may also have mitigating effect, suppressing unrest by dissuading social activities. Using a new monthly panel on social unrest in 130 countries, we find a positive cross-sectional relationship between...

Mexico has had one of the highest death tolls from Covid-19 and among the largest declines in output compared to peers. This paper utilizes data on Mexico's thirty-two states to better understand the relationship between health and economic outcomes. For instance, did the states with worse...

In this paper we analyze the dynamics among past major pandemics, economic growth, inequality, and social unrest. We provide evidence that past major pandemics, even though much smaller in scale than COVID-19, have led to a significant increase in social unrest by reducing output and increasing...

This paper examines the economic effects of policies to contain Covid-19, by extracting lessons from Sweden's experience during the 'Great Lockdown'. Sweden's approach was less stringent and based more on social responsibility than legal obligations compared to European peers. First, we provide...

We quantify the effect of vaccinations on economic activity in the United States using weekly county level data covering the period end-2020 to mid-2021. Causal effects are identified through instrumenting vaccination rates with county-level pharmacy density interacted with state-level vaccine...

The health and economic impacts of COVID-19 on India have been substantial, with wide variation across states and union territories. This paper quantifies the impact of containment measures and voluntary social distancing on both the spread of the virus and the economy at the state level during...

To assess the resilience of India's corporate sector against COVID-19-related shocks, we conducted a series of stress tests using firm-level corporate balance sheet data. The results reveal a differential impact across sectors, with the most severe impact on contact-intensive services,...