TSE economists weigh in on the role of the ECB and financial markets for the financing of the Covid debt in Europe.

A new working paper by Daron Acemoglu, Victor Chernozhukov, Iván Werning and Michael Whinston study optimal lockdown policy in the framework of a standard SIR epidemic model with multiple risk groups (MR-SIR).

The tradeoffs between contagion management and economic activity is sharper in poor countries and emerging markets. "We cannot have the poor, the labourers and the migrants bear the brunt of the effort to contain the spread of the virus, nor do we want to weaken the foundations of the economy so much that we emerge from the pandemic onto an economic wasteland."

Micro-data on mobility in the US show that individuals substantially reduced their exposure to others long before the introduction of restrictions on movement in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

A paper by Matz Dahlberg (IBF, UU, IFAU) and a group of Uppsala-based researchers suggests that changes in mobility patterns are similar across geographic areas with different socioeconomic and demographic characteristics.

Researchers from the Mechanism Design and Education Economics groups of Institute of Economics, CERS have joined forces with a charity organisation and an e-learning platform to create a web platform for assigning students to mentors in Hungary. The matching runs are conducted once a week to form mentoring pairs and groups based on the needs and preferences of the participants.

Mathematical models are used to approximate epidemic outbreaks and try to predict their outcomes. In this popular Youtube lecture, Tom Britton, Professor in Mathematical Statistics and Dean of Mathematics & Physics at Stockholm University, explains the basic concepts of the Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) model.

Developing countries face substantially different trade-offs and even more uncertainty compared to rich countries when dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic. The International Growth Centre (IGC) released a policy guidance note that clearly spells out what the main issues are.

A new working paper by Jakob Jonnerby (Oxford) and co-authors analyzes how to optimally prioritize testing resources under scarcity.

Rationing of medical resources is a critical issue in the COVID-19 pandemic. A new working paper analyzes the consequences of rationing medical resources through a reserve system.