Twenty-one NBER working papers distributed this week provide new insights on economic aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic and potential virus containment policies. A total of 115 NBER working papers have presented new pandemic-related research.

This week’s studies range widely in focus and methodology. They address the consequences of broad-based versus targeted lockdown policies (27232), how various scenarios for reopening the economy might affect economic and health outcomes (27244), measurement issues that arise when tracking the virus’ transmission rate (27218) and the predictive value of antibody tests (27226), document the inadequacy of home environments to protect against disease exposure in many developing nations (27200), study the power of bailouts to avoid corporate bankruptcies (27207), and document the pandemic’s impact so far on labor markets (27208, 27243, 27246). They present summary data on the risks and prospective returns of vaccine development (27212), on the replacement rate of unemployment insurance benefits (27216), on how South Korea’s public disclosure of where individuals who tested positive for COVID-19 lived affected social interaction patterns (27220), on the role of shorter global supply chains in reducing the risk of pandemic-related production disruptions (27224), on the role of financial market imperfections in determining the macroeconomic impact of the pandemic (27228), on the impact of shelter-in-place laws on individual behavior and virus transmission (27229, 27235, 27236), on factors that determine beliefs about the pandemic and the extent of social distancing (27237, 27245), on the future of social safety nets (27239), and on forecasting the evolution of country-level COVID-19 cases (27248).