Working After Covid-19: Cross-Country Evidence from Real-Time Survey Data

On March 9th, with the official count of COVID-positive individuals at 7,985 and of deaths from COVID at 463, Italy was the first European country to entered into a comprehensive, nation-wide lockdown. Containment measures were further tightened on March 22nd, when a Prime Minister’s Decree mandated the shut-down of any unessential productive activity, de facto bringing to a halt a large chunk of the Italian economy. Other European countries immediately followed: Austria on March 16th, France and Germany on March 17th, the UK on March 23rd.The aim of these lockdown measures was to confine the spread of the coronavirus, to limit pressure on the national health system and, of course, to contain the death counts. Different degrees of lockdown were implemented at different point in time and across different countries. These public policy measures included closing schools, closing non-essential businesses, economic activities and institutions, stopping public transportation, prohibiting meetings of two or more people, imposing quarantine on people entering the country, closing borders. Moreover, individuals were asked (or mandated) to follow health and social distancing measures, such as, washing hands, coughing in the elbow, stop hugging or greeting, keeping physical distance from the others, staying at home, avoiding crowed places, stop meeting friends. Early studies (Kraemer, 2020) show that these measures were effective in reducing COVID-19 spread in the province of Hubei in China. However, these restraining measures cause also economic and psychological harms for the restrained individuals (Brookset al., 2020) and have economic consequences (see Baldwin and di Mauro, 2020, for a review).