Role of professionalism in response to the COVID-19 pandemic: Does a public health or medical background help?

In response to the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), there have been substantial variations in policy response and performance for disease control and prevention within and across nations. It remains unclear to what extent these variations may be explained by bureaucrats' professionalism, as measured by their educational background or work experience in public health or medicine. To investigate the effects of officials' professionalism on their response to and performance in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, we collect information from the résumés of government and Party officials in 294 Chinese cities, and integrate this information with other data sources, including weather conditions, city characteristics, COVID-19-related policy measures, and health outcomes. We show that, on average, cities whose top officials had public health or medical backgrounds (PHMBGs) had a significantly lower infection rate than cities whose top officials lacked such backgrounds. We test the mechanisms of these effects and find that cities whose officials had a PHMBG implemented community closure more rapidly than those lacked such backgrounds. Our findings highlight the importance of professionalism in combating the pandemic.     

The spatiotemporal evolution of COVID-19 in China and its impact on urban economic resilience

The spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has had a major political, economic, social, and cultural impact on various countries worldwide. Based on economic operation, public opinion, public health, government policies and population inflow in the affected areas, this study measures daily economic resilience during the COVID-19 outbreak in 286 prefecture-level cities in China (from 1^st January to 8^th February, 2020). Specifically, this study further investigates the economic resilience and the number of COVID-19 cases by analysing the evolutionary trend of their spatial distribution pattern using the standard deviation ellipse (SDE). The impact of COVID-19 on economic resilience is examined using a panel vector autoregressive model. The following are the findings. (1) The economic resilience value decreased throughout the study period, but the cities with high economic resilience showed a trend of spatial diffusion in the late study period. Wuhan’s lockdown strategy was benefit to control the spread of COVID-19, and promptly stopped the decline of China's economic resilience. (2) Economic resilience and the number of COVID-19 cases influenced their future trends positively, but this effect gradually decreased over time. During the COVID-19, although the number of confirmed cases significantly influenced China's economic resilience, and the disease's spread was evident, China maintained a high level of economic development resilience. (3) The rise in economic resilience during the pandemic's early stages promoted the number of confirmed cases, but the strength of this relationship gradually declined as the pandemic progressed. Returning to work and other activities may increase the risk of infection. Numerous policies implemented at the outbreak’ inception aided in laying the groundwork for economic resilience. Although the outbreak had a detrimental effect on economic resilience in the later stages of the pandemic, a convergent trend was observed at the end of the research period. (4) Using variance decomposition, we discovered that future economic resilience was significantly influenced by itself and by relatively few changes. However, the impact of confirmed cases on economic resilience becomes apparent after the fourth period. This indicates that the number of confirmed cases must be limited during the initial stages. The early support of various sectors in China facilitated the spatial expansion of economically resilient cities. The pandemic has a non-negligible negative impact on economic resilience, but this has been mitigated by Wuhan's timely closure.     

The macroeconomic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic: A SIR-DSGE model approach

This paper proposes a susceptible-infected-removed dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (SIR-DSGE) model to assess the macroeconomic impact of the recent COVID-19 outbreak. The parameters of the SIR setting are calibrated to COVID-19 data from China. Using the model, we illustrate how the pandemic could result in consumption and output loss. We show that a combination of quarantine policy and random testing of the uninfected is effective in reducing the number of infected individuals and outperforms the alternative scenarios in which only one of the policies is implemented. Moreover, the economic impacts of both policies are evaluated. Compared with the decentralized equilibrium, we find that the Ramsey social planner allows output to decrease more substantially during the pandemic, in exchange for a faster economic recovery.     

Riding out the COVID-19 storm: How government policies affect SMEs in China

Based on a nationally representative survey on SMEs in China, we study the impact of government policy interventions on SMEs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings are three-fold. First, relief policies in the form of payment deferrals and exemptions significantly improve SMEs' cash flows and further stimulate their operational recovery. This effect is more pronounced for firms with larger shares of high-skilled employees. Second, financial support policies do not appear to be effective in alleviating SMEs' cash constraints or encouraging the reopening of small businesses, potentially due to difficulties in accessing policy-oriented loans and misallocation of credit. Last, regional and local lock-down policies decrease SMEs' incidence of reopening and delay their expected reopening in the near future, likely by reducing consumer demand. Our findings shed new light on the policy debates on supporting SMEs during the COVID-19 pandemic.     

The Impact of COVID-19 on Chinese trade and production: An empirical analysis of processing trade with Japan and the US

The COVID-19 pandemic severely disrupted international trade, leading countries to grapple with product shortages and firms to experience major supply chain issues. These challenges increased production costs and significantly contributed to lower trade and higher inflation. In this paper, we examine the impact of COVID-19 on Chinese trade through its two main trading partners: Japan and the US. By differentiating products by product type and processing status, we find evidence that products in the middle of the global supply chain were most affected by the pandemic and that the severity of the shock depends on the partner country’s role in the global supply chain. Additionally, we find that Chinese exports are more impacted than Chinese imports, regardless of processing status. These findings are largely consistent with economic theory. Understanding that the effects of global shocks vary by product and country will help guide policies that minimize supply chain disruptions.     

“The better you feel,the harder you fall”: Health perception biases and mental health among Chinese adults during the COVID-19 pandemic

The health risks of the current COVID-19 pandemic, together with the drastic mitigation measures taken in many affected nations, pose an obvious threat to public mental health. To assess predictors of poor mental health in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study first implements survey-based measures of health perception biases among Chinese adults during the pandemic. Then, it analyzes their relation to three mental health outcomes: life satisfaction, happiness, and depression (as measured by the CES−D). We show that the health overconfidence displayed by approximately 30% of the survey respondents is a clear risk factor for mental health problems; it is a statistically significant predictor of depression and low levels of happiness and life satisfaction. We also document that these effects are stronger in regions that experienced higher numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths. Our results offer clear guidelines for the implementation of effective interventions to temper health overconfidence, particularly in uncontrollable situations like the COVID-19 pandemic.     

Out of the shadows: Impact of SARS experience on Chinese netizens' willingness to donate for COVID-19 pandemic prevention and control

While charitable donations help to raise funds and contribute to pandemic prevention and control, there are many unanswered questions about how people make such donation decisions, especially in countries like China where charitable donations have played an increasing role in recent years. This study contributes to the literature by assessing the potential impacts of Chinese netizens' experience with the 2002 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic on their willingness to donate for COVID-19 pandemic prevention and control. Specifically, this study applies a difference-in-differences (DID) model to a dataset collected from a nationwide survey to examine how individuals' exposure to the SARS epidemic affects their willingness to donate to alleviate the COVID-19 pandemic. The results suggest that individuals' SARS epidemic experiences in their early lives, especially during the “childhood-adolescence” period, had a lasting and far-reaching impact on their willingness to donate toward COVID-19 pandemic prevention and control. Also, the impacts were likely heterogeneous by such sociodemographic factors as educational background, health status, and income level. The empirical findings highlight the importance of considering early-life experiences in developing and implementing epidemic prevention and control policies. While the SARS experience likely affected Chinese netizens' willingness to donate toward COVID-19 pandemic prevention and control, lessons learned from both the SARS epidemic and COVID-19 pandemic could be used to develop more effective public health education and prevention programs as well as to increase public donations for future pandemic prevention and control.     

Small business under the COVID-19 crisis: Expected short- and medium-run effects of anti-contagion and economic policies

This study makes a causal inference on the effects of anti-contagion and economic policies on small business by conducting a survey on Japanese small business managers’ expectations about the pandemic, policies, and firm performance. We first find the business suspension request decreased targeted firms’ sales by 10 percentage points on top of the baseline 9 percentage points decline due to COVID-19, even though the Japanese anti-contagion policy was in a form of the government’s request that is not legally enforceable. Second, using a discontinuity in the eligibility criteria, we find lump-sum and prompt subsidies improved firms’ prospects of survival by 19 percentage points. Third, the medium-run recovery of firms’ performance is expected to depend crucially on when infections would end, indicating that the anti-contagion policies could complement longer-run economic goals.     

Pandemic and employment: Evidence from COVID-19 in South Korea

Using two complementary approaches, this study examines the deterioration of the Korean labor market during the first 10 months of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Applying the synthetic control method, we first find that the COVID-19 outbreak has eliminated 1.1 million jobs (4.2% of nonfarm employment) nationwide in April 2020. However, a difference-in-differences approach shows that local variation in COVID-19 intensity, which captures the “regional” effect of the pandemic, explains only 9% of the national shock. The portion of the regional effect remains low until December. This is mainly because the nationwide fear and policies such as social distancing measures also have a “common” effect on local economies. Our findings suggest that the COVID-19 shock may last long in the labor market due to this common effect unless the risk of infection is completely eliminated.     

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on global GDP growth

This paper describes one of the first attempts to gauge the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global trajectory of real GDP over the course of 2020 and 2021. It is also among the first efforts to distinguish between the role of domestic variables and global trade in transmitting the economic effects of COVID-19. We estimate panel data regressions of the quarterly growth in real GDP on pandemic variables for 90 countries over the period 2020 Q1 through 2021 Q4. We find that readings on the number of COVID-19 deaths had a very small effect in our aggregate sample. On the other hand, changes in the stringency of the lockdown measures taken by governments to restrict the spread of the virus were an important influence on GDP. The economic effects of the pandemic differed between rich and poor countries: COVID-19 deaths exerted a somewhat greater drag on GDP in advanced economies, although this difference was not statistically significant, whereas lockdown restrictions were more injurious to economic activity in emerging and developing economies. In addition to these domestic pandemic effects, global trade represented a significant channel through which the economic effects of the pandemic spilled across national borders. This finding underscores how globalization makes each country vulnerable not only to medical contagion from the COVID-19 pandemic, but to economic contagion as well.     

The impact of COVID-19 on international trade: Evidence from the first shock

This study investigates how the effects of COVID-19 on international trade changed over time. To do that, we explore monthly data on worldwide trade from January to August in 2019 and 2020. Specifically, our study data include the exports of 34 countries to 173 countries. We estimated the gravity equation by employing various variables as a proxy for the COVID-19 damage. Our findings can be summarized as follows: First, regardless of our measures to quantify the COVID-19 pandemic, we found significantly negative effects of COVID-19 on the international trade of both exporting and importing countries. Second, those effects, especially the effects of COVID-19 in importing countries, tended to become insignificant since July 2020. This result implies that the harmful impacts of COVID-19 on international trade were accommodated after the first wave of the pandemic to some extent. Third, we found heterogeneous effects across industries. The negative effects on non-essential, durable products persist for a long time, whereas positive effects in industries providing medical products were observed.     

创新低碳之城:创新型城市建设的碳排放绩效评估

创新决定城市未来，低碳引领未来城市。中国政府自2008年开始实施创新型城市试点政策，并将绿色低碳作为创新型城市建设的原则和目标。因此，准确评估创新型城市建设对碳排放绩效的影响效应，对于进一步推广这一试点政策具有重要意义。文章利用中国城市的面板数据，借助于创新型城市试点政策在不同城市、不同试点时间上的变异，使用双重差分法估计了创新型城市建设对碳排放绩效的影响。研究发现，相比于非试点城市，创新试点城市的碳排放绩效平均增加2.47%，意味着创新型城市建设显著提升碳排放绩效。经过共同趋势、工具变量、干扰政策、安慰剂等一系列稳健性检验后，上述结论依然成立。机制分析表明，创新型城市建设能够强化创新政策支持、提高创新要素集聚、增加创新投入和改善创新环境，从而促进技术创新、优化产业结构和转变发展方式，这有利于降低碳排放水平，进一步提升碳排放绩效。从动态效应上看，创新型城市建设对碳排放绩效的提升效应具有持续性，并且随时间不断增强。文章是国内首篇从绿色低碳发展的角度探讨创新型城市试点政策效应的文献，不仅丰富了碳排放绩效的相关研究，也为在全国范围内推广创新型城市建设提供了经验证据，同时为打造创新、低碳等新型特色城市提供了政策参考。     

The social scar of the pandemic: Impacts of COVID-19 exposure on interpersonal trust

This paper employs a difference-in-differences strategy to examine the causal effect of exposure to the COVID-19 pandemic on interpersonal trust amidst zero-COVID policies in China. Using a nationally representative panel survey, we find that COVID-19 exposure leads to a decrease in the levels of generalized trust. We also show that the change in interpersonal trust varies across domains. Specifically, COVID-19 exposure significantly decreases trust in parents, neighbors, and local government officials, but has small and insignificant effects on trust in doctors, strangers, and Americans. Empirical tests suggest that changes in income and physical health status are not likely to be potential channels. We provide some evidence for the mechanism of deteriorated mental health status and pessimistic expectations.     

Pandemic (COVID‐19) Policy,Regional Cooperation and the Emerging Global Production Network†

In this paper, we explore the possible policy responses to the COVID‐19 pandemic shock as well as the related economic (financial crisis) shocks on trade and global value chains (GVC) in East Asia. We find that regional policy coordination is critical to mitigate and isolate the pandemic shock. It is important to identify the pandemic events early to flatten the pandemic curve at the national and regional level. This supports a recent study by the World Bank (2020), which highlights the importance of early mitigation policies during the pandemic shock. The cost of the pandemic and economic shocks will increase significantly when several countries in the region experience the pandemic shock concurrently. In this case, flattening the regional pandemic curve becomes important. The results also indicate the need for greater coordination in East Asia to mitigate the pending economic shock in terms of unemployment, corporate bankruptcy and financial market fragility. The paper also highlights that the stability of the GVC network is critical during the pandemic in terms of hedging the risk of disruptions to the procurement of critical medical and health products as well as maintaining service linkages to manufacturing, such as the logistics sector. Regional policy coordination and the stability of GVC will be valuable in the post‐pandemic recovery of the region.     

Expenditure responses to the COVID-19 pandemic

We examine how the COVID-19 contagion influences consumer expenditure patterns. We show that the consumption expenditure responses to the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic are significantly different between the older and younger generations. We find that older adults spend less than the younger generation by at least 5% during the pandemic. In fact, those aged above 60 significantly decrease their spending even on food and drink products by 13%. We also find that older adults forgo shopping in favor of the younger generation. These responses might be due to the fear of COVID-19 infection (Immordino et al., 2022).     

COVID-19 and trade: Simulated asymmetric loss

This paper uses 2018 data as a benchmark to build a numerical 26-country global general equilibrium model with trade cost and an endogenous trade imbalance structure. We assume that COVID-19 will increase the trade cost between countries and decrease labor supply in production. We use China’s trade data from January to April in 2020 to calibrate the influence level parameters and then simulate the trade effects of COVID-19 in China, the EU, the US, and the world. Our simulation results find that all countries’ trade and exports will be significantly hurt by the pandemic. Due to the trade diversion effect and the price growth effect, some countries will see an increase in import trade. Comparatively, the pandemic has the most negative impact on global trade, followed by the EU, the US, and China. As the pandemic deepens, the negative impact on trade will increase. The worldwide pandemic has the most significant impact on US trade, with an effect about 1.5 times that of the average world effect.     

COVID-19 impact on firm investment—Evidence from Chinese publicly listed firms

The COVID-19 outbreak had a significant impact on business cash flows and investment activities. This paper examined the COVID-19 impact on Chinese business investment in 3326 A-share listed quarterly financial reports, from which it was found that the negative relationship was more pronounced in the large, eastern Chinese state-owned firms. Using a propensity score matching method and difference-in-differences estimation, corporate financial flexibility was also examined, with the results indicating that high cash flexibility provided a buffer that allowed firms to better deal with adverse external shocks as the firms that had high cash flexibility were able to significantly increase their investments after the COVID-19 outbreak. Various robustness tests were conducted, all of which verified the robustness of the results. Overall, the empirical results provided evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic in China had a negative impact on Chinese listed firms, and verified the vital role of flexible financial reserves for firm survival and development during crises.     

Testing policy effectiveness during COVID-19: An NK-DSGE analysis

We examine the effectiveness of fiscal and monetary policy in mitigating the impact of COVID-19 in India using the NK-DSGE framework. In terms of policy effectiveness, our findings imply that expansionary monetary policy is effective in reviving economic growth both from the demand side and supply side. In contrast, expansionary fiscal policy is effective only from the supply side. Our findings recommend the implementation of optimal policy mix in a coordinated and staggered framework for effective mitigation of ill-effects of the COVID-19, such as reviving employment and capacity utilization to its pre-pandemic level with minimal inflationary effects.     

The COVID-19 pandemic and the world trade network

Global trade suffered a significant contraction in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and its growth is expected to remain below the pre-pandemic trend. Did the relative importance of countries in the world trade network change as a result of the pandemic? The answer to this question is particularly important for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries because of their relative importance in world trade as well as their strong trade linkages with China, where the COVID-19 virus originated. This paper examines how the world trade network has changed since the COVID-19 pandemic, with a particular focus on ASEAN countries. Tracking the changes in centrality from January 2000 to March 2021, we find no evidence for most ASEAN and major trading countries that centrality changed significantly after the pandemic began. Our results suggest the resilience of the trade pattern for these countries.     

The COVID‐19 Pandemic and Its Impact on the Global Economy: What Does It Take to Turn Crisis into Opportunity?

The COVID‐19 pandemic broke out at a time when there were heightened uncertainties in the global economy. Understanding these uncertainties provides an important background for analyzing the impact of the pandemic on the global economy, assessing the effectiveness of policy measures in combating the pandemic and reviving the global economy, and predicting the trajectory of the economic recovery in the post‐pandemic era. We analyze how COVID‐19 would likely deepen an existing malaise in the global economy, and what could be done to address these problems while managing the economic recovery. We argue that three fundamental factors that could lead to a solid recovery in the post pandemic era are structural reform, new technology and re‐integration. They could be managed by instituting a new “global social contract.” Supported by strong public policies at all levels, especially at national level, these three factors could bring about the salvation of the global economy as it recovers or re‐emerges from the pandemic crisis.