Background: Government-imposed lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted essential healthcare services in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), including childbirth delivery care. While a few studies have documented a decline in institutional deliveries, little is known about the...

This paper examines the effects of state capacity on the reported Covid-19 infection (and mortality) rate and its policy implications. We analyse two dimensions of state capacity which were critical during the pandemic. The healthcare capacity acted to contain the virus outbreak (an effect we...

Hassan et al. (2024) describe a randomized controlled trial conducted in Bangladesh during COVID-19. This comment identifies data irregularities from the original paper's replication package and notes its connection to other published papers. Critically, Hassan et al. (2024) andWang et al....

Objective: This study aims to assess the protective mask notifications used in the Safety Gate/RAPEX system (an early warning system for managing safety used by the European Commission) between 2020 and 2022 in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study continues research into the impact...

The COVID-19 pandemic was a major shock for working parents, who faced sudden disruptions in both their work environment and their children’s schooling. We study the effect of remote schooling on parental labor market outcomes in Sweden, a setting characterized by minimal COVID-related...

At the onset of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) lockdown in the Philippines in April 2020, the Asian Development Bank, in partnership with the Philippine government and the private sector, implemented the Bayan Bayanihan (BB) food relief program which served approximately 162,000 households...

This study examines the effect of a typhoon on low-income urban neighborhoods in the Philippines during the coronavirus disease quarantine. Using household panel data, we assess welfare-as measured by psychological distress, food consumption, and human capital investment-exploiting...

One of the main types of government intervention aimed at fighting the COVID-19 pandemic were the social distancing measures. This article presents a novel approach to examining the relationship between social distancing and workforce composition. The model used is a SIRD model with dynamically...

Jack et al. (2023) estimated the impact of district-level schooling modes (in-person, hybrid, or virtual learning) during the 2020-2021 academic year on standardized test pass rates for grades 3-8 across 11 U.S. states. Between 2019 and 2021, average pass rates declined by 12.8 percentage points...

The COVID-19 pandemic has wrought global disruptions, impacting societies and economies significantly, while vaccine hesitancy remains a pressing concern. This paper introduces a framework for analyzing vaccination decision-making, emphasizing the roles of perceived costs and social influences....

During several weeks in the second half of the year 2020, the cantons of Switzerland could choose to adopt the government-determined facial-mask policy, corresponding to mandatory facial-mask wearing on public transport, or a strict facial-mask policy, corresponding to mandatory facial-mask...

This comprehensive study delves into the nuanced relationship between public health initiatives, particularly non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), and their economic repercussions amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Employing a dataset spanning from February 2020 to June 2021, this study conducts a...

This paper analyses changes in the speed of labour demand for new hires in response to the lockdowns that were repeatedly put in place to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. It tests whether the uncertainty-reducing effect of similar lockdowns occurring in quick succession increased the...

This paper analyses changes in the speed of labour demand for new hires in response to the lockdowns that were repeatedly put in place to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. It tests whether the uncertainty-reducing effect of similar lockdowns occurring in quick succession increased the...

This paper estimates the effects of having children at home on the labor market outcomes of women in Mexico during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings suggest that women with children at home experienced some additional negative impacts on their labor supply immediately after...

We assess whether the COVID-19 vaccine induces COVID-19 risky behavior (e.g., going to bars and restaurants) and thus reduces vaccine efficacy. A key empirical challenge is the endogeneity bias when comparing risk-taking by vaccination status since people choose whether to get vaccinated. To...

We use two surveys to assess why work from home (WFH) varies so much across countries and people. A measure of cultural individualism accounts for about one-third of the cross-country variation in WFH rates. Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US score highly on individualism and WFH rates,...

Can societies be nudged to adopt beneficial behaviors? Publicizing how people behave on average-descriptive-norms nudging-has emerged as a key tool for increasing the adoption of desirable behaviors. While nudging, by describing social norms, has proven effective in one-shot interventions in...

Vaccine boosters have been recommended to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. A mathematical model with three vaccine doses and susceptibility is formulated. The model is calibrated using the cumulative number of hospitalized cases from Alberta, Canada....