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Covid-19 analyses

A series of background briefings on the policy issues arising from the Covid-19 pandemic.

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Labour market shocks during the Covid-19 pandemic

Claudia Hupkau, Ingo Isphording, Stephen Machin and Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela show how cuts in earnings affect the time parents spent with their children, and the money spent supporting learning. Read more...
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Innovation for a strong and stable recovery

Ralf Martin, Sam Unsworth, Anna Valero and Dennis Verhoeven highlight how investments in clean technology can help the UK meet environmental goals and boost post-Covid recovery. Read more...

All Covid-19 analyses

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Recovering from the first Covid-19 lockdown: Economic impacts of the UK's Eat Out to Help Out scheme

We evaluate some of the economic impacts of the UK’s Eat Out to Help Out (EOTHO) scheme on the food service sector. EOTHO subsidised the cost of eating out, with a 50% discount Mondays to Wednesdays in August 2020. We ex...Read more...

Nicolás González-Pampillón, Gonzalo Nunez-Chaim and Katharina Ziegler

10 February 2021

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Prices and inflation in a pandemic - a micro data approach

The Covid-19 lockdowns and recession are the most exceptional economic events in living memory and will impact the economy for years to come. One vital channel is via price changes. Price rises and cuts alter real wages,...Read more...

Richard Davies

4 February 2021

CEP Covid-19 analysis
A major wave of UK business closures by April 2021? The scale of the problem and what can be done

This report presents an analysis of the financial health of UK businesses, which shows that immediate action is needed to prevent a wave of corporate failure in early April. We cannot delay action. Now is also the moment...Read more...

Peter Lambert and John Van Reenen

27 January 2021

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Labour market shocks during the Covid-19 pandemic: inequalities and child outcomes

We study the effect of negative labour market shocks borne by parents during the Covid-19 crisis on resource and time investments in children and the channels through which negative labour market shocks experienced by pa...Read more...

Claudia Hupkau, Ingo Isphording, Stephen Machin and Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela

18 December 2020

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Innovation for a strong and sustainable recovery

In the recovery from Covid-19, innovation and diffusion will be key to addressing several structural challenges facing the UK economy. These include improving the UK’s longstanding poor productivity performance, addressi...Read more...

Ralf Martin, Sam Unsworth, Anna Valero and Dennis Verhoeven

18 December 2020

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Covid-19 and changing crime trends in England and Wales

We document changing crime trends in England and Wales in the context of the current global pandemic. During the first lockdown that span from mid-March to mid-May 2020 there was a decrease in all crime categories except...Read more...

Tom Kirchmaier and Carmen Villa-Llera

17 December 2020

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Covid-19 and the self-employed: six months into the crisis

Six months after Covid-19 first hit, it is clear that it is the greatest economic crisis of the modern age. The economy has contracted far more rapidly than in previous crises, with GDP dropping by a record 19.5 per cent...Read more...

Jack Blundell, Stephen Machin and Maria Ventura

10 November 2020

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Generation COVID: emerging work and education inequalities

The purpose of this brief paper is to present initial findings from the recently collected LSE-CEP Social Mobility survey, which was undertaken as part of our UKRI project ‘Generation COVID and Social Mobility: Evidence ...Read more...

Lee Elliot Major, Andrew Eyles and Stephen Machin

26 October 2020

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Jobs for a strong and sustainable recovery from Covid-19

The UK’s future economic, social and environmental prosperity will be shaped by how it deals with, and recovers from, the impact of Covid-19. This paper sets out coordinated net-zero-aligned investments which the UK can ...Read more...

Pia Andres, Giorgia Cecchinato, Penny Mealy, Charlotte Taylor, Sam Unsworth and Anna Valero

19 October 2020

CEP Covid-19 analysis
The business response to Covid-19: the CEP-CBI survey on technology adoption

We present new data from a survey of 375 UK businesses conducted in July 2020 in partnership with the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), which seeks to understand the way in which firms have innovated in response t...Read more...

Capucine Riom and Anna Valero

30 September 2020

CEP Covid-19 analysis
City of dreams no more: the impact of Covid-19 on urban workers in India

Many developing economies have large informal sectors and growing urban youth populations, who lack basic social protections at work. The CEP surveyed 8,500 workers aged 18 to 40 in urban India to understand their experi...Read more...

Shania Bhalotia, Swati Dhingra and Fjolla Kondirolli

1 September 2020

CEP Covid-19 analysis
What can previous recessions tell us about the Covid-19 downturn?

The labour market effects of the Covid-19 crisis measured as of June 2020 are compared with the three most recent UK recessions: the early 1980s, the early 1990s, and the downturn induced by the global financial crisis i...Read more...

Brian Bell, Mihai Codreanu and Stephen Machin

17 August 2020

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Covid-19 and Brexit: Real-time updates on business performance in the United Kingdom

Nearly four months have passed since the UK went into lockdown to restrict the spread of Covid-19. The health effects have been severe, and an inevitable consequence of the lockdown was a huge 20 per cent decline in GDP ...Read more...

Josh De Lyon and Swati Dhingra

29 July 2020

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Strategy, investment and policy for a strong and sustainable recovery: an action plan

The UK and the world have suffered disruption and hardship from the COVID-19 pandemic on an immense scale. Together with the tragic consequences of the health crisis, there is now a real risk of protracted global depress...Read more...

Nick Robins, James Rydge, Nicholas Stern, Sam Unsworth, Anna Valero and Dimitri Zenghelis

2 July 2020

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Covid-19 and social mobility

Governments are having to balance short- and long-term interests, and the trade-offs they generate, as they try to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic. Social distancing measures may limit the number of immediate deaths f...Read more...

Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin

28 May 2020

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Self-employment in the Covid-19 crisis

The Covid-19 shock is one of the largest economic shocks that has taken place in living memory. The crisis has served to highlight the challenges governments face in extending social insurance to self-employed workers, f...Read more...

Jack Blundell and Stephen Machin

22 May 2020

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Work, care and gender during the Covid-19 crisis

The Covid-19 crisis has especially hit service sectors with frequent social interactions, in which women are over-represented. At the same time, if not directly subject to the lock-down, women are more likely to hold job...Read more...

Claudia Hupkau and Barbara Petrongolo

14 May 2020

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Covid-19 school shutdowns: what will they do to our children's education?

Evidence from unexpected temporary school closures and reduced instruction time suggests school closures will reduce educational achievement, both in the short and long term. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds are ...Read more...

Andrew Eyles, Steve Gibbons and Piero Montebruno

7 May 2020