95 posts on "Covid-19"
February 9, 2021
Understanding the Racial and Income Gap in Commuting for Work Following COVID‑19
The introduction of numerous social distancing policies across the United States, combined with voluntary pullbacks in activity as responses to the COVID-19 outbreak, resulted in differences emerging in the types of work that were done from home and those that were not. Workers at businesses more likely to require in-person work—for example, some, but not all, workers in healthcare, retail, agriculture and construction—continued to come in on a regular basis. In contrast, workers in many other businesses, such as IT and finance, were generally better able to switch to working from home rather than commuting daily to work. In this post, we aim to understand whether following the onset of the pandemic there was a wedge in the incidence of commuting for work across income and race. And how did this difference, if any, change as the economy slowly recovered? We take advantage of a unique data source, SafeGraph cell phone data, to identify workers who continued to commute to work in low income versus higher income and majority-minority (MM) versus other counties.
Posted at 11:00 am in Demographics, Equitable Growth, Human Capital, Inequality, Labor Market, Pandemic, Unemployment | Permalink
Some Workers Have Been Hit Much Harder than Others by the Pandemic
Abel and Deitz look at the outsized impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on some workers, particularly those who are in lower-wage jobs, without a college degree, female, minority, and younger.
Posted at 11:00 am in Demographics, Employment, Equitable Growth, Inequality, Labor Market, Pandemic, Unemployment | Permalink | Comments (1)
January 12, 2021
Understanding the Racial and Income Gap in COVID‑19: Public Transportation and Home Crowding
This is the second post in a series that aims to understand the gap in COVID-19 intensity by race and income. In our post yesterday, we looked at how comorbidities, uninsurance rates, and health resources may help to explain the race and income gap observed in COVID-19 intensity. We found that a quarter of the income gap and more than a third of the racial gap in case rates are explained by health status and system factors. In this post, we look at two factors related to indoor density—namely the use of public transportation and increased home crowding. Here, we will aim to understand whether these two factors affect overall COVID-19 intensity, whether the income and racial gaps of COVID can be further explained when we additionally include these factors, and whether and to what extent these factors independently account for income and racial gaps in COVID-19 intensity (without controlling for the factors considered in the other posts in this series).
Understanding the Racial and Income Gap in Covid‑19: Health Insurance, Comorbidities, and Medical Facilities
Our previous work documents that low-income and majority-minority areas were considerably more affected by COVID-19, as captured by markedly higher case and death rates. In a four-part series starting with this post, we seek to understand the reasons behind these income and racial disparities. Do disparities in health status translate into disparities in COVID-19 intensity? Does the health system play a role through health insurance and hospital capacity? Can disparities in COVID-19 intensity be explained by high-density, crowded environments? Does social distancing, pollution, or the age composition of the county matter? Does the prevalence of essential service jobs make a difference? This post will focus on the first two questions. The next three posts in this series will focus on the remaining questions. The posts will follow a similar structure. In each post, we will aim to understand whether the factors considered in that post affect overall COVID-19 intensity, whether the racial and income gaps can be further explained when we additionally include the factors in consideration in that post, and whether and to what extent the factors under consideration in that post independently affect racial and income gaps in COVID-19 intensity (without controlling for the factors considered in the other posts in this series).
December 23, 2020
Understanding the Impact of COVID‑19: The Top Five LSE Posts of 2020
An annual tradition at Liberty Street Economics is to present our most-read posts of the year. Given the events of 2020, New York Fed economists and guest coauthors focused their analysis on the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, writing some seventy articles since March on the subject. Our leading posts, in terms of traffic, all touch on the theme in some way. Consider this space a hub for COVID-19 coverage for some time to come, and take a look back at the top five posts grabbing attention in 2020.
December 1, 2020
The Costs of Corporate Debt Overhang Following the COVID‑19 Outbreak
Leading up to the COVID-19 outbreak, there were growing concerns about corporate sector indebtedness. High levels of borrowing may give rise to a “debt overhang” problem, particularly during downturns, whereby firms forego good investment opportunities because of an inability to raise additional funding. In this post, we show that firms with high levels of borrowing at the onset of the Great Recession underperformed in the following years, compared to similar—but less indebted—firms. These findings, together with early data on the revenue contractions following the COVID-19 outbreak, suggest that debt overhang during the COVID-recession could lead to an up to 10 percent decrease in growth for firms in industries most affected by the economic repercussions of the battle against the outbreak.
November 24, 2020
How Bank Reserves Are Distributed Matters. How You Measure Their Distribution Matters Too.
Changes in the distribution of banks’ reserve balances are important since they may impact conditions in the federal funds market and alter trading dynamics in money markets more generally. In this post, we propose using the Lorenz curve and Gini coefficient as a new approach to measuring reserve concentration. Since 2013, concentration, as captured by the Lorenz curve and the Gini coefficient, has co-moved with aggregate reserves, decreasing as aggregate reserves declined (such as in 2015-18) and increasing as aggregate reserves increased (such as at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic).
Posted at 7:00 am in Bank Capital, Banks, Fed Funds, Federal Reserve, Financial Markets, Inequality, Panic | Permalink
November 16, 2020
How Has COVID‑19 Affected Banking System Vulnerability?
Kristian Blickle, Matteo Crosignani, Fernando Duarte, Thomas Eisenbach, Fulvia Fringuellotti, and Anna Kovner The COVID-19 pandemic has led to significant changes in banks’ balance sheets. To understand how these changes have affected the stability of the U.S. banking system, we provide an update of four analytical models that aim to capture different aspects of banking system […]
November 9, 2020
Has the Pandemic Reduced U.S. Remittances Going to Latin America?
Workers’ remittances—funds that migrants send to their country of birth—are an important source of income for a number of economies in Latin America, with the bulk of these funds coming from the United States. Have these flows dried up, given the COVID-19 recession and resulting unprecedented job losses? We find that remittances initially faltered but rebounded in the summer months, performing better than during the last U.S. recession despite more severe job losses. Large government income support payments probably explain some of this resilience. Whether remittances continue to hold up is likely to depend on how quickly the U.S. job market recovers, particularly in hard-hit service industries.
October 23, 2020
At the New York Fed: Sixth Annual Conference on the U.S. Treasury Market
On September 29, 2020, the New York Fed hosted the sixth annual Conference on the U.S. Treasury Market. The one-day event, held virtually this year, was co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the Federal Reserve Board, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The agenda featured a number of panels and speeches on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Treasury market in March 2020, the ensuing policy response, and ways that market resiliency could be improved in light of the vulnerabilities revealed. Two speeches also touched on the ongoing transition from LIBOR to alternative reference rates.
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