Data and Code for: Disentangling Covid-19, Economic Mobility, and Containment Policy Shocks

This is data and code accompanying the article Disentangling Covid-19, Economic Mobility, and Containment Policy Shocks. We study the dynamic interaction between Covid-19, economic mobility, and containment policy. We use Bayesian panel structural vector autoregressions with daily data for 44 countries, identified through traditional and narrative sign restrictions. We find that incidence shocks and containment shocks have large and persistent effects on mobility, morbidity, and mortality that last for 1-2 months. These shocks are the main drivers of the pandemic, explaining between 20-60% of the average and historical variability in mobility, cases, and deaths worldwide. The policy tradeoff associated to non-pharmaceutical interventions is 1pp less economic mobility per day for 8% fewer deaths after 3 months.

Geographic Coverage:   44 countries: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom and United States.

Time Period:   12/31/2019 – 8/17/2020

Universe:   ovid-19 cumulative death, Covid-19 cumulative cases, containment policy index, economic mobility index, stock prices small firms for all 44 countries

Data Type:  aggregate data

Methodology

Sampling:  The 44 countries in the sample account for 81% of worldwide infections and deaths due to Covid-19 and for 72% of global GDP.

Data Source:    Data are downloaded via Macrobond. 

• Containment policy index; source: University of Oxford
• Covid-19 cumulative deaths; source: World Health Organization
• Covid-19 cumulative cases; source: World Health Organization
• Total tests; source: Our World in Data
• Economic mobility index; source: Google
• MEI; source: Mobility and Engagement Index of Atkinson et al. (2020)
• Real GDP; source: World Bank
• Population; source: World Bank
• Unemployment rate; source: World Bank
• Stock prices small firms; source: MSCI
• Stock prices large firms; source: MSCI
• Weekly Economic Index; source: Leading Indicators, Federal Reserve Bank of New York
• Event data; source: http://superspreadingdatabase.com

Unit(s) of Observation:  daily data for 44 countries

Geographic Unit:    country