THE ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF COVID-19 MITIGATION POLICIES ON UNEMPLOYMENT AND ECONOMIC POLICY UNCERTAINTY

Authors

Anasuya Haldar, National Institute of Technology Rourkela, IndiaFollow
Narayan Sethi, National Institute of Technology (NIT), IndiaFollow

Document Type

Article

Abstract

This paper examines the effects of COVID-19 mitigation strategies and Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) on unemployment-rate over the period November 2019 to April 2021 for the 16 most severely COVID-19 affected countries. Our specific objectives are threefold: first, to examine the dynamic relationship between EPU and unemployment-rate; second, to analyze the extent to which government’s COVID-19 mitigation response affects the unemployment-rate; and third, to examine the effects of governments economic policies on the unemployment-rate through market indicators, such as the business and consumer confidence indices. We find that EPU increases fluctuations in unemployment for the COVID-19 affected countries, while governments’ vaccination drive significantly reduces it. Increases in government stringency aggravate unemployment in the informal sectors and enhances labor inequality.

Recommended Citation

Haldar, Anasuya and Sethi, Narayan (2022) "THE ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF COVID-19 MITIGATION POLICIES ON UNEMPLOYMENT AND ECONOMIC POLICY UNCERTAINTY," Bulletin of Monetary Economics and Banking: Vol. 25: No. 0, Article 6.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21098/bemp.v25i0.1833
Available at: https://bulletin.bmeb-bi.org/bmeb/vol25/iss0/6

First Page

61

Last Page

84

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Country

India

Affiliation

National Institute of Technology Rourkela