The COVID-19 pandemic has changed peoples’ lives in unexpected ways, especially how they allocate their time between work and other activities. Demand for online learning has surged during a period of mass layoffs and transition to remote work and schooling. Can this uptake in online learning...

This paper examines the role of political factors in mediating the formation of beliefs among individuals and the adoption of regional policies in the United States. First, using comprehensive and nationally representative data on over 47,000 individuals available from March to July, we document...

Using new high-frequency data that covers a representative sample of small business owners, we investigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting state policies on the retail, hospitality, food, and accommodation sectors. First, we find that business closure policies are...

How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected state budgets? Using a quarterly panel of states between 1994 and 2019, we estimate how changes in employment affect tax revenues. We find that a one percentage point (pp) rise in employment is associated with a 1.56pp rise in total tax revenue, which is...

Stay-at-home orders (SAHOs) have been implemented in most U.S. states to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. This paper quantifies the short-run impact of these containment policies on the supply of and demand for child care. The child care market may be particularly vulnerable to a SAHO-type...

This paper studies how shocks to the social network can have aggregate effects. First, using daily consumption data across counties over the COVID-19 pandemic and Facebook's Social Connectedness Index (SCI), we find that a 10% rise in SCI-weighted cases and deaths is associated with a 0.18% and...

This paper provides a comprehensive assessment of financial intermediation and the economic effects of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a large and novel small business support program that was part of the initial policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the US. We use loan-level...

This paper provides a comprehensive assessment of financial intermediation and the economic effects of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a large and novel small business support program that was part of the initial policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the US. We use loan-level...

This paper takes an early look at the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a large and novel small business support program that was part of the initial policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We use new data on the distribution of the first round of PPP loans and high-frequency micro-level...