The Economic Impacts of Covid-19: Evidence from a New Public Database Built Using Private Sector Data
The Economic Impacts of Covid-19: Evidence from a New Public Database Built Using Private Sector Data
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DOI：
10.1093/qje/qjad048
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发表时间：
2023-10-04
影响因子：
13.7
通讯作者：
Stepner, Michael
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Chetty, Raj;Friedman, John N.;Stepner, Michael
我们建立了一个公开可用的数据库，使用来自私人公司的匿名数据实时跟踪美国的经济活动。我们每周报告按县、部门和收入组分列的消费者支出、商业收入、职位发布和就业率的统计数据。使用可公开获得的数据，我们通过分析其影响在各个子群体中的异质性，展示了新冠肺炎大流行是如何影响经济的。高收入个人在2020年3月大幅削减了支出，特别是在需要面对面互动的行业。这种支出的减少大大减少了富裕、人口稠密地区的小企业的收入。这些企业解雇了许多员工，导致了广泛的失业，特别是在这些地区的低薪工人中。高薪工人经历了持续数周的V型衰退，而低薪工人经历了规模更大、持续时间更长的失业。尽管到2021年12月，消费者支出和招聘信息已经完全恢复，但在最初受到严重打击的地区，低薪工作的就业率仍然低迷，这表明劳动力需求的暂时下降导致劳动力供应持续减少。在这一诊断分析的基础上，我们评估了旨在遏制经济活动螺旋式下降的财政刺激政策的效果。现金刺激支出在疫情初期导致支出大幅增加，但在疫情后期的反应要小得多，特别是对高收入家庭。与历史估计相比，对边际消费倾向的实时估计提供了对随后几轮刺激支出影响的更好预测。总体而言，我们的研究结果表明，财政政策可以阻止消费者支出的二次下滑和失业，但当消费者支出受到的最初冲击来自健康担忧时，财政政策无法恢复充分就业。更广泛地说，我们的分析展示了从私营部门数据构建的公共统计数据如何支持许多研究和实时政策分析，为经验宏观经济学提供了一个新的工具。
We build a publicly available database that tracks economic activity in the United States at a granular level in real time using anonymized data from private companies. We report weekly statistics on consumer spending, business revenues, job postings, and employment rates disaggregated by county, sector, and income group. Using the publicly available data, we show how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the economy by analyzing heterogeneity in its effects across subgroups. High-income individuals reduced spending sharply in March 2020, particularly in sectors that require in-person interaction. This reduction in spending greatly reduced the revenues of small businesses in affluent, dense areas. Those businesses laid off many of their employees, leading to widespread job losses, especially among low-wage workers in such areas. High-wage workers experienced a V-shaped recession that lasted a few weeks, whereas low-wage workers experienced much larger, more persistent job losses. Even though consumer spending and job postings had recovered fully by December 2021, employment rates in low-wage jobs remained depressed in areas that were initially hard hit, indicating that the temporary fall in labor demand led to a persistent reduction in labor supply. Building on this diagnostic analysis, we evaluate the effects of fiscal stimulus policies designed to stem the downward spiral in economic activity. Cash stimulus payments led to sharp increases in spending early in the pandemic, but much smaller responses later in the pandemic, especially for high-income households. Real-time estimates of marginal propensities to consume provided better forecasts of the impacts of subsequent rounds of stimulus payments than historical estimates. Overall, our findings suggest that fiscal policies can stem secondary declines in consumer spending and job losses, but cannot restore full employment when the initial shock to consumer spending arises from health concerns. More broadly, our analysis demonstrates how public statistics constructed from private sector data can support many research and real-time policy analyses, providing a new tool for empirical macroeconomics.