Notes by EIEF Faculty

This page hosts notes, comments, analyses and newspaper articles authored or co-authored by members of EIEF faculty. Some of the contributions are in Italian.

By Graziella Bertocchi (in Italian)
Shows that the stronger resilience of women to the contagion only holds for age brackets above 50, and is reversed for younger ages. Conjectures that this reflects age differences in labour force participation, and concludes that bringing women back to work earlier than men might backfire; appeared in the online newspaper La Voce on April 8, 2020. An extension, in English, provides a cross-country comparison confirming that working-age women are as susceptible as men, if not more, to COVID-19; appeared in the online CEPR Policy Portal VOX on April 23, 2020.

By Graziella Bertocchi and Arcangelo Dimico
Investigates the racial impact of COVID-19 using an individual-level daily dataset that includes race among a wide array of other individual characteristics. The data cover Cook County, Illinois, the county that includes the City of Chicago. Shows that African Americans are overrepresented in terms of COVID-19 related deaths, that the epidemic starts earlier from them compared to other races, and that historical redlining predicts COVID-19 mortality along racial lines. The paper has been reproduced in medRxiv, referenced to in the online CEPR Policy Portal VOX on July 29, 2020 and in the online IZA World of Labor Portal on August 3, 2020, and discusses in a VoxTalk on September 9, 2020.

By Tito Boeri and Luigi Guiso (in Italian)
Argues that the banking foundations can play an important role in providing guarantees for the loans needed to cushion the immediate effects of the crisis induced by the response to the pandemic; appeared in the online newspaper La Voce on April 7, 2020.

By Ruben Durante, Luigi Guiso and Giorgio Gulino
Shows that areas in Italy with stronger civic capital were quicker to internalize the negative externality of mobility on the spread of contagion and to comply with the restrictions imposed by the Government. Appeared in the online CEPR Policy Portal VOX on April 16, 2020. An academic paper extends the analysis also to Germany and measures the reduction in the number of deaths that would have been observed if all Italian regions had the highest civic capital.

By Luigi Guiso and Matteo Paradisi (in Italian)
Suggests that a gradual lifting of the lockdown should start from those sectors which simultaneously require less physical distance among workers and whose productions are either more used by other sectors or more frequently exported; appeared in the newspaper Il Foglio on April 19, 2020.

By Luigi Guiso and Daniele Terlizzese (in Italian).

• An analysis of the impact of the economic shock on the households whose components work in the sectors directly affected by the lockdown decided on March 23. A shorter version, focussing on households with self-employed workers, appeared in the online newspaper La Voce on April 2, 2020.

• Argues that letting the pandemics spread would have a larger cost, not only in terms of human lives, but also for the economy (appeared in the Italian newspaper Il foglio on March 28, 2020).

• Argues that the period of lockdown should be seized to reorganize production processes and make the working environment safer, to restart production as soon as possible (appeared in the Italian newspaper Il foglio on March 24, 2020)

• Some thoughts on the nature of the economic crisis entailed by the social distancing measures enacted on March 11 to contain the pandemic, with an analysis of the role and limits of the standard responses to “flatten the curve” of the economic impact and a suggestion about another possible response (appeared in the Italian newspaper Il foglio on March 20, 2020).

By Francesco Lippi, Fernando Alvarez, David Argente
Uses a simple Susceptible-Infected-Recovered epidemiology model, calibrated with available micro data, to study the optimal lockdown policy. The model incorporates a constraint on hospital capacity and explores alternative policies involving sierological testing or virological testing coupled with contact tracing and quarantine.

By Georgy Egorov, Ruben Enikolopov, Alexey Makarin and Maria Petrova
Shows that endogenous social distancing, usually thought to be a pro-social behavior more likely to take place in more homogeneous societies, can instead prevail in more ethnically diverse ones. Explores the issue theoretically and with data from Russia and U.S..

By Markus Brunnermeier, Jean-Pierre Landau, Marco Pagano and Ricardo Reis
A proposal on how to channel funds to firms facing a temporary but sharp drop in their revenues. Appeared in Vox-EU and in Italian, in the newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore on March 20, 2020.

By Elena Carletti, Tommaso Oliviero, Marco Pagano, Loriana Pelizzon and Marti Subrahmanyan
Estimates the drop in profits and the equity shortfall triggered by the COVID-19 shock and the subsequent lockdown.

By Marco Pagano, Christian Wagner and Josef Zechner
Investigates whether security markets price the effect of social distancing on firms' operations, showing that firms that are more resilient to social distancing outperform those with lower resilence.

By Cecilia Sala, Francesco Del Prato and Matteo Paradisi (in Italian)
A series of videos on how to read the numbers of the pandemics.

By Gianluca Rinaldi and Matteo Paradisi
An estimate of fatality rates by age, based on population level statistics for the municipalities in Lombardy which were first isolated. The estimate relies on well measured overall death rates, eschewing measurement problems in confirmed cases and covid-attributed deaths. 

By Franco Peracchi and DanieleTerlizzese
Shows how to use the available information, in conjunction with minimal, easily interpretable and credible assumptions, to obtain a range of estimates for the point prevalence of COVID-19 infection in Italy as a whole and in its various regions..

By Facundo Piguillem and Liyan Shi
Uses an epidemiological model to evaluate the lockdown policies, allowing for a concern for consumption smoothing that increases the length of the lockdown but reduces its intensity. The paper also explores the alternative of massive random testing, showing that it could generate sizeable welfare gains.

By Fabiano Schivardi, with Guido Romano

• Computes the financial needs of firms facing a liquidity squeeze due to the fall in revenues, in Italian (appeared in the Italian online newspaper La Voce on March 24, 2020).

• Another version of the exercise, in English, with a stata code and a mock dataset to replicate the methodology.

• A follow-up (in Italian) of the exercise, to assess whether the measures introduced by the Government suffice to meet the liquidity needs of SMEs, stressing the need for their speedy implementation (appeared in the Italian online newspapaer La Voce on April 10, 2020) .