Corona-Pandemic

DIW focus 6 / 2020

US and EU Secure Vaccine Production on Home Soil

The deployment of a safe and effective vaccine for Covid-19 will be central to lifting containment measures. In a bid to speed up vaccine deployment, governments are entering into ‘Advance Purchase Agreements’ (APAs) with vaccine companies to secure access to vaccine doses. We document and compare the vaccine procurement strategies of the US and the EU. Most notably, we find that both the US and the ...

2020| Jan Malek, Melissa Newham, Jo Seldeslachts, Marcel Wieting

DIW Weekly Report 37 / 2020

Global Economy: Slow Recovery Following Deep Recession: DIW Economic Outlook

The coronavirus pandemic caused a global market crash in the first half of 2020. Following a massive slump of around four percent in the first quarter, global GDP decreased in the second by five percent. Lower rates of new infections, together with far-reaching monetary and fiscal policy measures to dampen the economic impact of the pandemic, ensure that production and the trust of consumers and firms ...

2020| Claus Michelsen, Guido Baldi, Geraldine Dany-Knedlik, Hella Engerer, Stefan Gebauer, Konstantin A. Kholodilin, Sandra Pasch, Malte Rieth

DIW focus 4 / 2020

A Green New Deal after Corona: What We Can Learn from the Financial Crisis

Already after the financial crisis in 2008/2009 there was a debate on whether elements aiming at sustainable development can be part of the stimulus packages and support the recovery of the economy. Despite the instinct of policy makers to prioritise battle-tested policies during a crisis, significant levels and different types of climate-friendly components were integrated in the 2009 stimulus packages ...

2020| Mats Kröger, Sun Xi, Olga Chiappinelli, Marius Clemens, Nils May, Karsten Neuhoff, Jörn Richstein

SOEPpapers 1099 / 2020

Parental Well-Being in Times of Covid-19 in Germany

We examine the differential effects of Covid-19 and related restrictions on individuals with dependent children in Germany. We specifically focus on the role of school and day care center closures, which may be regarded as a “disruptive exogenous shock” to family life. We make use of a novel representative survey of parental well-being collected in May and June 2020 in Germany, when schools and day ...

2020| Mathias Huebener, Sevrin Waights, C. Katharina Spiess, Nico A. Siegel, Gert G. Wagner

DIW Weekly Report 32/33 / 2020

European Bank Deposit Insurance Could Cushion Impact of Corona-Induced Corporate Insolvencies

The European banking union has so far lacked its third pillar: a joint insurance fund for bank savings deposits. As the present study shows, this could be a major disadvantage in dealing with the economic impact of the corona pandemic. A scenario in which a wave of corporate insolvencies leads to loan and deposit losses reaching six percent over a year would over- whelm Germany’s national deposit insurance ...

2020| Marius Clemens, Stefan Gebauer, Tobias König

SOEPpapers 1098 / 2020

The Situation is Serious, but Not Hopeless - Evidence-Based Considerations on the Intra-Couple Division of Childcare before, during and after the Covid-19 Lockdown

Drawing on data from the Socio-economic Panel (SOEP) for 2018, we use a sample of 2,145 heterosexual couples with children below age 13 to investigate the paternal involvement in domestic childcare and the relation of the underlying mechanisms to the two job-related “Covid-19 factors” systemic relevance (SR) and capacity to work from home (WfH). Based on bi- and trivariate analyses of the intra-couple ...

2020| Christina Boll, Simone Schüller

Diskussionspapiere 1903 / 2020

COVID-19: A Crisis of the Female Self-Employed

We investigate how the economic consequences of the pandemic, and of the government-mandated measures to contain its spread, affected the self-employed relative to employed individuals in Germany and, secondly, to what extent the female self-employed were more strongly hit than their male counterparts. For our analysis, we use representative, real-time survey data where respondents are asked about ...

2020| Daniel Graeber, Alexander S. Kritikos, Johannes Seebauer

DIW Weekly Report 23 / 2020

Identifying Effective Combinations of Economic Policy Measures for the Coronavirus Recession in Europe

As the coronavirus pandemic spread across the globe in early 2020, the European Central Bank as well as national governments in the euro area enacted or announced numerous economic policy measures to counteract the severe economic consequences of the resulting lockdowns. In this paper, the immediate effect of the announcements on government bond and stock markets are estimated in a panel study. The ...

2020| Kerstin Bernoth, Marius Clemens, Geraldine Dany-Knedlik, Stefan Gebauer

SOEPpapers 1083 / 2020

COVID-19 Is Not Affecting All Working People Equally

The corona pandemic and the political measures undertaken to contain it are changing the working conditions of many people in Germany. Based on data from the first tranche of a supplementary survey (SOEP-Cov) to the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), this study analyzes the effects of the corona crisis on Germany’s working population in 2019. In this paper, we investigate how severely people have ...

2020| Carsten Schröder, Theresa Entringer, Jan Goebel, Markus M. Grabka, Daniel Graeber, Martin Kroh, Hannes Kröger, Simon Kühne, Stefan Liebig, Jürgen Schupp, Johannes Seebauer, Sabine Zinn

DIW focus 3 / 2020

ECB and Fed Monetary Policy Measures against the Economic Effects of the Coronavirus Pandemic Have Little Effect

To cushion the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic, central banks have taken far-reaching monetary policy measures. The US Federal Reserve has lowered its interest rates and, like the European Central Bank, has expanded its bond purchase programs. However, it is questionable whether these measures are having the desired effect of calming the markets and supporting the real economy. It is true ...

2020| Kerstin Bernoth, Geraldine Dany-Knedlik, Anna Gibert

DIW Weekly Report 24/25 / 2020

German Economy Slowly Recovering Following a Deep Slump: DIW Economic Outlook

The coronavirus recession has left deep marks on the German economy and despite economic policy action, it is likely to heal only slowly. The partial easing of the lockdown and a gradual revival of global value chains are generating positive stimuli, but massive income losses will curb demand for some time to come. The German Federal Government was able to avoid the worst by implementing measures to ...

2020| Claus Michelsen, Marius Clemens, Max Hanisch, Simon Junker, Konstantin A. Kholodilin, Laura Pagenhardt, Thore Schlaak

DIW Weekly Report 12 / 2020

Coronavirus Causing Major Economic Shock to the Global Economy: DIW Economic Outlook

The ongoing corona pandemic is causing a major shock to the global economy. In the coming months, many countries are expected to suffer severe economic downturns. Sealing off entire regions disrupts supply chains, resulting in production losses and falls in consumption. The global economy is expected to grow by as little as 2.5 percent this year instead of by the 3.7 percent forecasted previously. ...

2020| Claus Michelsen, Guido Baldi, Geraldine Dany-Knedlik, Hella Engerer, Stefan Gebauer, Malte Rieth

Diskussionspapiere 1893 / 2020

Who Are the Essential and Frontline Workers?

Identifying essential and frontline workers and understanding their characteristics is useful for policymakers and researchers in targeting social insurance and safety net policies in response to the COVID-19 crisis. We develop a working definition that may inform additional research and policy discussion and provide data on the demographic and labor market composition of these workers. In a three-step ...

2020| Francine D. Blau, Josefine Koebe, Pamela A. Meyerhofer