IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/glodps/524.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Short-Term Economic Consequences of COVID-19: Exposure to Disease, Remote Work and Government Response

Author

Listed:
  • Béland, Louis-Philippe
  • Brodeur, Abel
  • Wright, Taylor

Abstract

In this ongoing project, we examine the short-term consequences of COVID- 19 on employment and wages in the United States. Guided by a pre-analysis plan, we document the impact of COVID-19 at the national-level using a simple difference and test whether states with relatively more confirmed cases/deaths were more affected. Our findings suggest that COVID-19 in- creased the unemployment rate, decreased hours of work and labor force participation and had no significant impacts on wages. The negative impacts on labor market outcomes are larger for men, younger workers, Hispanics and less-educated workers. This suggest that COVID-19 increases labor market inequalities. We also investigate whether the economic consequences of this pandemic were larger for certain occupations. We built three indexes using ACS and O*NET data: workers relatively more exposed to disease, work- ers that work with proximity to coworkers and workers who can easily work remotely. Our estimates suggest that individuals in occupations working in proximity to others are more affected while occupations able to work remotely are less affected. We also find that occupations classified as more exposed to disease are less affected, possibly due to the large number of essential workers in these occupations.

Suggested Citation

  • Béland, Louis-Philippe & Brodeur, Abel & Wright, Taylor, 2020. "The Short-Term Economic Consequences of COVID-19: Exposure to Disease, Remote Work and Government Response," GLO Discussion Paper Series 524, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:glodps:524
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/215888/1/GLO-DP-0524.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jane G Fortson, 2011. "Mortality Risk and Human Capital Investment: The Impact of HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(1), pages 1-15, February.
    2. Berger, Mark C. & Fleisher, Belton M., 1984. "Husband's health and wife's labor supply," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(1), pages 63-75, April.
    3. Brodeur, Abel & Cook, Nikolai & Heyes, Anthony, 2018. "Methods Matter: P-Hacking and Causal Inference in Economics," IZA Discussion Papers 11796, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Hamermesh, Daniel S., 2020. "Lockdowns, Loneliness and Life Satisfaction," IZA Discussion Papers 13140, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Thiemo Fetzer & Lukas Hensel & Johannes Hermle & Christopher Roth, 2021. "Coronavirus Perceptions and Economic Anxiety," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 103(5), pages 968–978-9, December.
    6. Harsha Thirumurthy & Joshua Graff Zivin & Markus Goldstein, 2008. "The Economic Impact of AIDS Treatment: Labor Supply in Western Kenya," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 43(3), pages 511-552.
    7. Martin S Eichenbaum & Sergio Rebelo & Mathias Trabandt, 2021. "The Macroeconomics of Epidemics [Economic activity and the spread of viral diseases: Evidence from high frequency data]," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 34(11), pages 5149-5187.
    8. James H. Stock, 2020. "Data Gaps and the Policy Response to the Novel Coronavirus," NBER Working Papers 26902, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Dingel, Jonathan I. & Neiman, Brent, 2020. "How many jobs can be done at home?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    10. Briscese, Guglielmo & Lacetera, Nicola & Macis, Mario & Tonin, Mirco, 2023. "Expectations, reference points, and compliance with COVID-19 social distancing measures," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    11. David Berger & Kyle Herkenhoff & Chengdai Huang & Simon Mongey, 2022. "Testing and Reopening in an SEIR Model," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 43, pages 1-21, January.
    12. Ross Levine & Yona Rubinstein, 2017. "Smart and Illicit: Who Becomes an Entrepreneur and Do They Earn More?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 132(2), pages 963-1018.
    13. Alexandre Mas & Amanda Pallais, 2017. "Valuing Alternative Work Arrangements," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(12), pages 3722-3759, December.
    14. David E. Bloom & David Canning & Günther Fink, 2014. "Disease and Development Revisited," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 122(6), pages 1355-1366.
    15. Theresa Kuchler & Dominic Russel & Johannes Stroebel, 2020. "The Geographic Spread of COVID-19 Correlates with the Structure of Social Networks as Measured by Facebook," NBER Working Papers 26990, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Robert J. Barro & José F. Ursúa & Joanna Weng, 2020. "The Coronavirus and the Great Influenza Pandemic: Lessons from the “Spanish Flu” for the Coronavirus’s Potential Effects on Mortality and Economic Activity," NBER Working Papers 26866, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Oswald, Andrew J. & Powdthavee, Nattavudh, 2020. "The Case for Releasing the Young from Lockdown: A Briefing Paper for Policymakers," IZA Discussion Papers 13113, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pc:p:3309-3416 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Susan L. Ettner & Richard G. Frank & Ronald C. Kessler, 1997. "The Impact of Psychiatric Disorders on Labor Market Outcomes," NBER Working Papers 5989, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Hassan, Tarek & Hollander, Stephan & van Lent, Laurence & Schwedeler, Markus & Tahoun, Ahmed, 2020. "Firm-Level Exposure to Epidemic Diseases: Covid-19, SARS, and H1N1," CEPR Discussion Papers 14573, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    21. Louis‐Philippe Beland & Bulent Unel, 2019. "Politics and entrepreneurship in the US," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(1), pages 33-57, February.
    22. Peter Lorentzen & John McMillan & Romain Wacziarg, 2008. "Death and development," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 13(2), pages 81-124, June.
    23. repec:mpr:mprres:6928 is not listed on IDEAS
    24. David Berger & Kyle Herkenhoff & Chengdai Huang & Simon Mongey, 2022. "Testing and Reopening in an SEIR Model," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 43, pages 1-21, January.
    25. Raouf Boucekkine & Rodolphe Desbordes & Hélène Latzer, 2009. "How do epidemics induce behavioral changes?," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 233-264, September.
    26. Fang, Hanming & Wang, Long & Yang, Yang, 2020. "Human mobility restrictions and the spread of the Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in China," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    27. Hans-Joachim Voth, 2013. "The Three Horsemen of Riches: Plague, War, and Urbanization in Early Modern Europe," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 80(2), pages 774-811.
    28. Garen, John, 1988. "Compensating Wage Differentials and the Endogeneity of Job Riskiness," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 70(1), pages 9-16, February.
    29. Clive Bell & Shantayanan Devarajan & Hans Gersbach, 2006. "The Long-Run Economic Costs of aids: A Model with an Application to South Africa," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank Group, vol. 20(1), pages 55-89.
    30. Baccini, Leonardo & Brodeur, Abel, 2020. "Explaining Governors' Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic in the United States," IZA Discussion Papers 13137, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    31. Guglielmo Briscese & Nicola Lacetera & Mario Macis & Mirco Tonin, 2020. "Compliance with Covid-19 Social-Distancing Measures in Italy: The Role of Expectations and Duration," CESifo Working Paper Series 8182, CESifo.
    32. Scott R Baker & Robert A Farrokhnia & Steffen Meyer & Michaela Pagel & Constantine Yannelis & Jeffrey Pontiff, 0. "How Does Household Spending Respond to an Epidemic? Consumption during the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic," The Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 10(4), pages 834-862.
    33. Barbara L. Wolfe & Steven C. Hill, 1995. "The Effect of Health on the Work Effort of Single Mothers," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 30(1), pages 42-62.
    34. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson, 2007. "Disease and Development: The Effect of Life Expectancy on Economic Growth," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(6), pages 925-985, December.
    35. Oscar Jorda & Sanjay R. Singh & Alan M. Taylor, 2022. "Longer-Run Economic Consequences of Pandemics," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 104(1), pages 166-175, March.
    36. Currie, Janet & Madrian, Brigitte C., 1999. "Health, health insurance and the labor market," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 50, pages 3309-3416, Elsevier.
    37. Lawrence F. Katz & Alan B. Krueger, 2019. "The Rise and Nature of Alternative Work Arrangements in the United States, 1995–2015," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 72(2), pages 382-416, March.
    38. David N. Well, 2007. "Accounting for the Effect Of Health on Economic Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 122(3), pages 1265-1306.
    39. Titan Alon & Matthias Doepke & Jane Olmstead-Rumsey & Michèle Tertilt, 2020. "The Impact of COVID-19 on Gender Equality," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2020_163, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    40. Fabian Stephany & Niklas Stoehr & Philipp Darius & Leonie Neuhauser & Ole Teutloff & Fabian Braesemann, 2020. "The CoRisk-Index: A data-mining approach to identify industry-specific risk assessments related to COVID-19 in real-time," Papers 2003.12432, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2020.
    41. Hoyt Bleakley, 2010. "Malaria Eradication in the Americas: A Retrospective Analysis of Childhood Exposure," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(2), pages 1-45, April.
    42. Andrew Atkeson, 2020. "What Will be the Economic Impact of COVID-19 in the US? Rough Estimates of Disease Scenarios," Staff Report 595, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    43. Callum Jones & Thomas Philippon & Venky Venkateswaran, 2021. "Optimal Mitigation Policies in a Pandemic: Social Distancing and Working from Home [A simple planning problem for covid-19 lockdown]," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 34(11), pages 5188-5223.
    44. Robert J. Barro & José F. Ursua & Joanna Weng, 2020. "The Coronavirus and the Great Influenza Epidemic - Lessons from the "Spanish Flu" for the Coronavirus's Potential Effects on Mortality and Economic Activity," CESifo Working Paper Series 8166, CESifo.
    45. Alwyn Young, 2005. "The Gift of the Dying: The Tragedy of AIDS and the Welfare of Future African Generations," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 120(2), pages 423-466.
    46. Aditya Goenka & Lin Liu, 2012. "Infectious diseases and endogenous fluctuations," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 50(1), pages 125-149, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Louis‐Philippe Beland & Abel Brodeur & Derek Mikola & Taylor Wright, 2022. "The short‐term economic consequences of COVID‐19: Occupation tasks and mental health in Canada," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 55(S1), pages 214-247, February.
    2. Louis-Philippe Beland & Abel Brodeur & Taylor Wright, 2020. "COVID-19, Stay-at-Home Orders and Employment: Evidence from CPS Data," Carleton Economic Papers 20-04, Carleton University, Department of Economics, revised 19 May 2020.
    3. Brodeur, Abel & Cook, Nikolai & Wright, Taylor, 2021. "On the effects of COVID-19 safer-at-home policies on social distancing, car crashes and pollution," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    4. David E. Bloom & Michael Kuhn & Klaus Prettner, 2022. "Modern Infectious Diseases: Macroeconomic Impacts and Policy Responses," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 60(1), pages 85-131, March.
    5. Brodeur, Abel & Clark, Andrew E. & Fleche, Sarah & Powdthavee, Nattavudh, 2021. "COVID-19, lockdowns and well-being: Evidence from Google Trends," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 193(C).
    6. Abel Brodeur & David Gray & Anik Islam & Suraiya Bhuiyan, 2021. "A literature review of the economics of COVID‐19," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(4), pages 1007-1044, September.
    7. Cem Çakmaklı & Selva Demiralp & Ṣebnem Kalemli-Özcan & Sevcan Yesiltas & Muhammed A. Yildirim, 2020. "COVID-19 and Emerging Markets: A SIR Model, Demand Shocks and Capital Flows," NBER Working Papers 27191, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Garriga, Carlos & Manuelli, Rody & Sanghi, Siddhartha, 2022. "Optimal management of an epidemic: Lockdown, vaccine and value of life," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    9. Brancati, Emanuele & Brancati, Raffaele, 2020. "Heterogeneous Shocks in the Covid-19 Pandemic: Panel Evidence from Italian Firms," GLO Discussion Paper Series 649, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    10. Christopher Avery & William Bossert & Adam Thomas Clark & Glenn Ellison & Sara Ellison, 2020. "Policy Implications of Models of the Spread of Coronavirus: Perspectives and Opportunities for Economists," CESifo Working Paper Series 8293, CESifo.
    11. Christopher Avery & William Bossert & Adam Clark & Glenn Ellison & Sara Fisher Ellison, 2020. "Policy Implications of Models of the Spread of Coronavirus: Perspectives and Opportunities for Economists," NBER Working Papers 27007, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Alexander Chudik & M. Hashem Pesaran & Alessandro Rebucci, 2020. "Voluntary and Mandatory Social Distancing: Evidence on COVID-19 Exposure Rates from Chinese Provinces and Selected Countries," Globalization Institute Working Papers 382, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    13. Jesper Akesson & Sam Ashworth-Hayes & Robert Hahn & Robert Metcalfe & Itzhak Rasooly, 2022. "Fatalism, beliefs, and behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 64(2), pages 147-190, April.
    14. David Bounie & Youssouf Camara & John Galbraith, 2020. "Consumers’ Mobility, Expenditure and Online-Offline Substitution Response to COVID-19: Evidence from French Transaction Data," Cahiers de recherche 14-2020, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    15. Sauvagnat, Julien & Barrot, Jean-Noël & Grassi, Basile, 2020. "Estimating the costs and benefits of mandated business closures in a pandemic," CEPR Discussion Papers 14757, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    16. Giorgia Menta, 2021. "Poverty in the COVID-19 Era: Real-time Data Analysis on Five European Countries," Research on Economic Inequality, in: Research on Economic Inequality: Poverty, Inequality and Shocks, volume 29, pages 209-247, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    17. Funke, Michael & Tsang, Andrew, 2020. "The People’s bank of China’s response to the coronavirus pandemic: A quantitative assessment," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 465-473.
    18. Marina Azzimonti-Renzo & Alessandra Fogli & Fabrizio Perri & Mark Ponder, 2020. "Pandemic Control in ECON-EPI Networks," Staff Report 609, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    19. Ambrocio, Gene & Juselius, Mikael, 2020. "Dealing with the costs of the COVID-19 pandemic – what are the fiscal options?," BoF Economics Review 2/2020, Bank of Finland.
    20. Łukasz Rachel, 2020. "An Analytical Model of Covid-19 Lockdowns," Discussion Papers 2029, Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    COVID-19; unemployment; wages; remote work; exposure to disease;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I15 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Economic Development
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:glodps:524. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/glabode.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.