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The Coronavirus Shock Looks More like a Natural Disaster than a Cyclical Downturn

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Abstract

It’s tempting to compare the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic to prior business cycle downturns, particularly the Great Recession. However, such comparisons may not be particularly apt—as evidenced by the unprecedented surge in initial jobless claims over the past three weeks. Recessions typically develop gradually over time, reflecting underlying economic and financial conditions, whereas the current economic situation developed suddenly as a consequence of a fast-moving global pandemic. A more appropriate comparison would be to a regional economy suffering the effects of a severe natural disaster, like Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina or Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. To illustrate this point, we track the recent path of unemployment claims in the United States, finding a much closer match with Louisiana after Katrina than the U.S. economy following the Great Recession.

Suggested Citation

  • Jason Bram & Richard Deitz, 2020. "The Coronavirus Shock Looks More like a Natural Disaster than a Cyclical Downturn," Liberty Street Economics 20200410a, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
  • Handle: RePEc:fip:fednls:87730
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    Cited by:

    1. Simona Giglioli & Giorgia Giovannetti & Enrico Marvasi & Arianna Vivoli, 2021. "The Resilience of Global Value Chains during the Covid-19 pandemic: the case of Italy," Working Papers - Economics wp2021_07.rdf, Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze per l'Economia e l'Impresa.
    2. Pagnottoni, Paolo & Spelta, Alessandro & Pecora, Nicolò & Flori, Andrea & Pammolli, Fabio, 2021. "Financial earthquakes: SARS-CoV-2 news shock propagation in stock and sovereign bond markets," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 582(C).
    3. Malo, Miguel, 2020. "Una reflexión sobre las primeras respuestas de política al impacto del Covid-19 sobre el empleo [A reflection on the first mitigating policies of the impact of Covid-19 on employment]," MPRA Paper 104390, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    disaster; pandemic; Katrina; coronavirus; jobless claims; COVID-19;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J0 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General
    • R10 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - General

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