10.31234/osf.io/jnxcu

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has unprecedented consequences on population health, with governments worldwide issuing public health directives which have major impacts on normal living. In the absence of a vaccine, a key way to control the pandemic is through behavioural change: people adhering to transmission-reducing behaviours (TRBs), such as physical distancing, regular hand washing, and wearing face covering, especially when physical distancing is difficult. The application of behavioural science is central to understanding factors that influence adherence to TRBs. Non-adherence may be explained by theories of how people think about the illness (the common-sense model of self-regulation) and/or how they think about the TRBs (social cognition theory and protection motivation theory). In addition, outbreaks of infectious diseases and the measures employed to curb them are likely to have detrimental effects on people’s mental and general health. Therefore, in representative repeated surveys we will apply behavioural theories to model adherence to TRBs, explain variations in adherence, and the effects on mental and general health in the Scottish population from June to November 2020, following the initial outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods Repeated 20-minute structured telephone surveys will be conducted with nationally representative random samples of 500 adults from throughout Scotland. The first 6 weeks the survey will be conducted weekly, thereafter fortnightly, for a total of 14 waves (total n=7000). Ipsos MORI will recruit participants through random digit dialling. The core survey will measure adherence to TRBs, mental and general health, and explanatory variables from the theories. Further questions will be added, enabling more detailed measurement of constructs in the core survey, additional themes, and questions that align with the evolving pandemic. Discussion This study will provide insights into the link between (changes in) adherence to TRBs and explanatory factors, and their effects on mental and general health, including event-related changes (e.g., when government directives change). Governments and other decision-makers may use these findings to tailor public health promotion, target specific population groups, and develop behaviourally informed interventions over the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic (along with any subsequent equivalent events) to protect health and limit the spread of COVID-19.

Protocol CHARIS study

10.31234/osf.io/bszm4

Misinformation often has a continuing effect on people’s reasoning despite clear correction. One factor assumed to affect post-correction reliance on misinformation is worldview-driven motivated reasoning. For example, a recent study with an Australian undergraduate sample found that when politically-situated misinformation was retracted, political partisanship influenced the effectiveness of the retraction. This worldview effect was asymmetrical, that is, particularly pronounced in politically-conservative participants. However, the evidence regarding such worldview effects (and their symmetry) has been inconsistent. Thus, the present study aimed to extend previous findings by examining a sample of 429 pre-screened U.S. participants supporting either the Democratic or Republican Party. Participants received misinformation suggesting that politicians of either party were more likely to commit embezzlement; this was or was not subsequently retracted, and participants’ inferential reasoning was measured. While political worldview (i.e., partisanship) influenced the extent to which participants relied on the misinformation overall, retractions were equally effective across all conditions. There was no impact of political worldview on retraction effectiveness, let alone evidence of a backfire effect, and thus we did not replicate the asymmetry observed in the Australian-based study. This pattern emerged despite some evidence that Republicans showed a stronger emotional response than Democrats to worldview-incongruent misinformation.

No Effect of Partisan Worldview on Corrections of Political Misinformation

10.31234/osf.io/dkqj6

COVID-19 has plagued the globe since January 2020, infecting millions and claiming the lives of several hundreds of thousands (at the time of writing). Despite this, many individuals have ignored public health guidance and continued to socialize in groups. Emergent work has highlighted the potential role that ideology plays in such behavior, and judgements of it. In response to this contemporary cultural phenomenon, we tested whether judgements of those allegedly flouting the guidance on social distancing were influenced by an interaction between the ideologies of those providing judgements, and those allegedly breaking the rules. Our data suggest that judgements of those flouting social distancing guidance are influenced by ideology in a symmetrical way. That is, both liberals and conservatives condemn outgroup flouting more than ingroup flouting. We discuss this finding in the context of theoretical work into ideological symmetries, and the implications of growing ideological polarization in contemporary Western democracies.

Ideological responses to the breaking of COVID-19 social distancing recommendations

10.31234/osf.io/536w7

Religion and science are two major sources of knowledge. Some accounts suggest that religious belief inhibits people from trusting scientific information, and encourages conflict between religion and science. We draw from theories of human motivation to challenge this claim, instead suggesting that religious people perceive less conflict between science and religion than non-religious people, that religious—but not non-religious—people use both science and religion when they explain phenomena, and that religious people rely on science more than non-religious people think they do. Five studies support our account. A pilot study uses a large representative sample of Americans to show that religious people perceive less conflict between science and religion than non-religious people. Studies 1-2 show that religious people view religion and science as equally and moderately instrumental for explaining extraordinary events (Study 1) and life’s “big questions” (Study 2), whereas non-religious people view science as highly instrumental and religion as not at all so. Study 3 finds that non-religious people mischaracterize religious people as more reliant on religion and less reliant on science than they really are, and also suggests that religious people view science and religion as orthogonal whereas non-religious people view them as hydraulic. Study 4 applies these findings to the COVID-19 pandemic, showing that faith-based strategies of avoiding infection do not inhibit adoption of science-based strategies. Religious people may be more open to science than many non-religious people think.

Believers Use Science and Religion, Non-Believers Use Science Religiously

10.31234/osf.io/478ef

Introduction In this study, we aimed to explore the attitude of medical students toward their roles and social accountability in this pandemic era. An online survey asked questions covering the topics of 1) the role of medical students in the pandemic era; 2) Medical education in the ‘new normal,’ and 3) the impact of COVID-19 on medical students. Methods The online survey, developed by a team consisting of 3 medical students, 3 psychiatric residents, and 3 psychiatric professors, was distributed to medical students, graduates, and professors in a single South Korean medical school. Anxiety symptom rating scales, including the Stress and Anxiety to Viral Epidemic - 6 (SAVE-6) scale and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder - 7 (GAD-7) scale, were also applied to measure participant anxiety level. Results All of the 213 medical students, 180 graduates, and 181 professors that participated in this online survey were at the same medical school. Medical students indicated their willingness to join the healthcare response to the COVID-19 pandemic if requested; however, graduates and professors recommended that medical students continue their medical school curriculum rather than join the response. In the new normal era, medical education was considered to be changed appropriately. Moreover, adequate knowledge of COVID-19 infection and spread must be considered for the continuation of clinical clerkships during the pandemic. Overall, medical students who indicated anxiety about treating possible or confirmed cases rated higher on the SAVE-6 scale. Finally, medical students who reported that COVID-19 had an influence on their studies and daily life rated higher on the general anxiety scale (GAD-7). Conclusion Social accountability is an important issue for medical students in the pandemic era. At the same time, cultivating professionalism is also important for the readiness for the future healthcare responses.

The Attitudes of Medical Students for Their Roles and Social Accountability in the COVID-19 Pandemic Era

Children are more likely to be harmed by not returning to school next month than if they catch coronavirus, the UK's chief medical adviser says.

Coronavirus: Missing school is worse than virus for children - Whitty

The data shows that most countries in the world have not seen major outbreaks as a result of reopening their education systems

Masks, no assembly and no choir: the science behind reopening schools safely

Statement from the Chief Medical Officers and Deputy Chief Medical Officers of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales on the evidence of risks and benefits to health from schools and childcare settings reopening.

Statement from the UK Chief Medical Officers on schools and childcare reopening

Economists and manufacturers worry the honeymoon phase for factories will run out of steam

Eurozone industry fears rebound from virus crash will be shortlived

Lead time bias is a well-recognized challenge especially when it comes to studies and statistics looking at cancer screenings. As the entry on the AHCJ website explains, lead time bias is a type of bias that can “artificially inflate the survival time of someone with a disease.”

Keep an eye out for lead-time bias with COVID-19 deaths

Amid the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic, substantial effort is being directed toward mining databases and publishing case series and reports that may provide insights into the epidemiology and clinical management of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). However, there is growing concern about whether attempts to infer causation about the benefits and risks of potential therapeutics from nonrandomized studies are providing insights that improve clinical knowledge and accelerate the search for needed answers, or whether these reports just add noise, confusion, and false confidence. Most of these studies include a caveat indicating that “randomized clinical trials are needed.” But disclaimers aside, does this approach help make the case for well-designed randomized clinical trials (RCTs) and accelerate their delivery?1 Or do observational studies reduce the likelihood of a properly designed trial being performed, thereby delaying the discovery of reliable truth?

10.1001/jama.2020.13319

Weighing the Benefits and Risks of Proliferating Observational Treatment Assessments: Observational Cacophony, Randomized Harmony

Business travel, which used to represent $1.5 trillion a year – about 1.7% of world GDP – has slowed to a trickle. But the economic impact will extend far beyond lost jobs at airlines and in the hospitality industry, because it will also lead to a substantial decline in the transfer of knowledge.

Why Zoom Can’t Save the World

New coronavirus infections have nearly doubled in France in recent weeks as Prime Minister Jean Castex warned that the country had been going "the wrong way" for two weeks.

Coronavirus: Cases surge as France goes 'wrong way'

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany recorded the biggest daily increase in new coronavirus cases in more than three months, data showed on Wednesday, with the health minister warning of outbreaks in nearly all parts of the country due to holiday returnees and party-goers.

Germany records biggest jump in new coronavirus cases since early May

A total of 312,789 cases have been confirmed in the UK since the beginning of the pandemic.

Coronavirus: UK records highest daily number of COVID-19 cases for nearly two months

Years of spending cuts and deepening inequality meant the worst off limped into this pandemic in a parlous state

Why did England have Europe's worst Covid figures? The answer starts with austerity

The pandemic has put paid to the thrill of recounting illicit activities. And we’re all the poorer for it

Nothing to speak of: the horror of a world without gossip

A campaign has highlighted plight of unmarried couples from different countries parted for months

'Like a prison sentence': the couples separated by Covid-19

Which is too bad because we really need to understand how the immune system reacts to the coronavirus.

Immunology Is Where Intuition Goes to Die

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Vilified, threatened with violence and in some cases suffering from burnout, dozens of state and local public health leaders around the U.S. have resigned or have been fired amid the coronavirus outbreak, a testament to how politically combustible masks, lockdowns and infection data have become.

Health officials are quitting or getting fired amid outbreak

Nearly half of Black small businesses had been wiped out by the end of April as the pandemic ravaged minority communities disproportionately, according to a report from the New York Fed.

The Covid-19 Crisis Has Wiped Out Nearly Half Of Black Small Businesses

Pandemic policy must include defining and measuring what we mean by mild infection.

A negative COVID-19 test does not mean recovery

10.31235/osf.io/4dsqa

Emerging out of the “reproducibility crisis” in science, metascientists have become central players in debates about research integrity, scholarly communication, and science policy. The goal of this article is to introduce metascience to STS scholars, detail the scientific ideology that is apparent in its articles, strategy statements, and research projects, and discuss its institutional and intellectual future. Put simply, metascience is a scientific social movement that seeks to use the tools of science- especially, quantification and experimentation- to diagnose problems in research practice and improve efficiency. It draws together data scientists, experimental and statistical methodologists, and open science activists into a project with both intellectual and policy dimensions. Metascientists have been remarkably successful at winning grants, motivating news coverage, and changing policies at science agencies, journals, and universities. Moreover, metascience represents the apotheosis of several trends in research practice, scientific communication, and science governance including increased attention to methodological and statistical criticism of scientific practice, the promotion of “open science” by science funders and journals, the growing importance of both preprint and data repositories for scientific communication, and the new prominence of data scientists as research makes a turn toward Big Science.

Metascience as a scientific social movement

10.3386/w26866

Mortality and economic contraction during the 1918-1920 Great Influenza Pandemic provide plausible upper bounds for outcomes under the coronavirus (COVID-19). Data for 48 countries imply flu-related deaths in 1918-1920 of 40 million, 2.1 percent of world population, implying 150 million deaths when applied to current population. Regressions with annual information on flu deaths 1918-1920 and war deaths during WWI imply flu-generated economic declines for GDP and consumption in the typical country of 6 and 8 percent, respectively. There is also some evidence that higher flu death rates decreased realized real returns on stocks and, especially, on short-term government bills.

The Coronavirus and the Great Influenza Pandemic: Lessons from the "Spanish Flu" for the Coronavirus's Potential Effects on Mortality and Economic Activity

10.3386/w27495

Mandated shutdowns of nonessential businesses during the COVID-19 crisis brought into sharp relief the tradeoff between public health and a healthy economy. This paper documents the short-run effects of shutdowns during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, which provides a useful counterpoint to choices made in 2020. The 1918 closures were shorter and less sweeping, in part because the US was at war and the Wilson administration was unwilling to let public safety jeopardize the war’s prosecution. The result was widespread sickness, which pushed some businesses to shutdown voluntarily; others operated shorthanded. Using hand-coded, high-frequency data (mostly weekly) this study reports three principal results. First, retail sales declined during the three waves of the pandemic; manufacturing activity slowed, but by less than retail. Second, worker absenteeism due to either sickness or fear of contracting the flu reduced output in several key sectors and industries that were not ordered closed by as much as 10 to 20% in weeks of high excess mortality. Output declines were the result of labor-supply rather than demand shocks. And, third, mandated closures are not associated with increases in the number or aggregate dollar value of business failures, but the number and aggregate dollar value of business failures increased modestly in weeks of high excess mortality. The results highlight that the tradeoff between mandated closures and economic activity is not the only relevant tradeoff facing public health authorities. Economic activity also declines, sometimes sharply, during periods of unusually high influenza-related illness and excess mortality even absent mandated business closures.

Business in a Time of Spanish Influenza

10.3386/w27525

We revisit measurement of Employer-to-Employer (EE) transitions, the main engine of labor market competition and employment reallocation, in the monthly Current Population Survey (CPS). We follow Fallick and Fleischman (2004) and exploit a key survey question introduced with the 1994 CPS redesign. We detect a sudden and sharp increase in the incidence of missing answers to this question starting in 2007, when the U.S. Census Bureau introduced a change in survey methodology, the Respondent Identification Policy (RIP). We show evidence of selection into answering the EE question by both observable and unobservable worker characteristics that correlate with EE mobility. We propose a selection model and a procedure to impute missing answers to the key survey question, thus EE transitions, after the introduction of the RIP. Our imputed aggregate EE series restores a close congruence with the business cycle, especially with the onset of the Great Recession, exhibits a much less dramatic drop in 2008-2009 and a full recovery by 2016, and eliminates the spurious appearance of declining EE dynamism in the US labor market after 2000. We also offer the first evidence of the (large and negative) impact of the COVID-19 crisis on EE reallocation.

Measuring Employer-to-Employer Reallocation

10.3386/w26975

We examine the stock trading behavior and returns of U.S. senators from 2012-March 2020. Stocks purchased by senators on average slightly underperform stocks in the same industry and size (market cap) categories by 11 basis points, 28 basis points and 17 basis points at the 1, 3, and 6-month time horizons. Stocks sold by senators underperform slightly for the first three months and then outperform slightly (a statistically insignificant 14 basis points) at the one year mark. We find no evidence that senators have industry specific stock picking ability related to their committee assignments. Neither Republican nor Democratic senators are skilled at picking stocks to buy, while stocks sold by Republican senators underperform by 50 basis points over three months. Stocks sold following the January 24th COVID-19 briefing do underperform the market by a statistically significant 9 percent while stocks purchased during this period underperform by 3 percent. Our findings contrast somewhat with recent news reports and studies of pre-STOCK Act (2012) returns, though are consistent with Eggers and Hainmueller (2013).

Relief Rally: Senators As Feckless As the Rest of Us at Stock Picking

Real-Time Real Economic Activity: Exiting the Great Recession and Entering the Pandemic Recession

10.3386/w27482

We study the real-time signals provided by the Aruoba-Diebold-Scotti Index of Business conditions (ADS) for tracking economic activity at high frequency. We start with exit from the Great Recession, comparing the evolution of real-time vintage beliefs to a "final" late-vintage chronology. We then consider entry into the Pandemic Recession, again tracking the evolution of real-time vintage beliefs. ADS swings widely as its underlying economic indicators swing widely, but the emerging ADS path as of this writing (late June) indicates a return to growth in May. The trajectory of the nascent recovery, however, is highly uncertain (particularly as COVID-19 spreads in the South and West) and could be revised or eliminated as new data arrive.

10.3386/w26984

We study the response of an economy to an unexpected epidemic. Households mitigate the spread of the disease by reducing consumption, reducing hours worked, and working from home. Working from home is subject to learning-by-doing and the capacity of the health care system is limited. A social planner worries about two externalities, an infection externality and a healthcare congestion externality. Private agents’ mitigation incentives are weak and biased. We show that private safety incentives can even decline at the onset of the epidemic. The planner, on the other hand, implements front-loaded mitigation policies and encourages working from home immediately. In our calibration, assuming a CFR of 1% and an initial infection rate of 0.1%, private mitigation reduces the cumulative death rate from 2.5% of the initially susceptible population to about 1.75%. The planner optimally imposes a drastic suppression policy and reduces the death rate to 0.15% at the cost of an initial drop in consumption of around 25%.

Optimal Mitigation Policies in a Pandemic: Social Distancing and Working from Home

10.3386/w27030

We analyze the sovereign bond issuance data of eight major emerging markets (EM) - Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, Turkey and South Africa - in 1970-2018. Our analysis suggests EMs are more likely to issue local-currency sovereign bonds if their currencies appreciated before the global financial crisis of 2008 (GFC). Inflation-targeting monetary policy regime increases the likelihood of issuing local-currency debt before GFC but not after. EMs that offer higher yields are more likely to issue local-currency bond after GFC. EM bonds which are smaller in size, shorter in maturity, or lower in coupon rate are more likely to be issued in local currency. Future data will allow us to test and identify structural changes associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath.

Good-Bye Original Sin, Hello Risk On-Off, Financial Fragility, and Crises?

This note studies optimal lockdown policy in a model in which the government can limit a pandemic’s impact via a lockdown at the cost of lower economic output. A government would like to commit to limit the extent of future lockdown in order to support more optimistic investor expectations in the present. However, such a commitment is not credible since investment decisions are sunk when the government makes the lockdown decision in the future. The commitment problem is more severe if lockdown is sufficiently effective at limiting disease spread or if the size of the susceptible population is sufficiently large. Credible rules that limit a government’s ability to lock down the economy in the future can improve the efficiency of lockdown policy.

10.3386/w27062

Pandemic Lockdown: The Role of Government Commitment

10.3386/w27232

We develop a simple dynamic economic model of epidemic transmission designed to be consistent with widely used SIR biological models of the transmission of epidemics, while incorporating economic benefits and costs as well. Our main finding is that targeted testing and isolation policies deliver large welfare gains relative to optimal policies when these tools are not used. Specifically, we find that when testing and isolation are not used, optimal policy delivers a welfare gain equivalent to a 0.6% permanent increase in consumption relative to no intervention. The welfare gain arises because under the optimal policy, the planner engineers a sharp recession that reduces aggregate output by about 40% for about 3 months. This sharp contraction in economic activity reduces the rate of transmission and reduces cumulative deaths by about 0.1%. When testing policies are used, optimal policy delivers a welfare gain equivalent to a 3% permanent increase in consumption. The associated recession is milder in that aggregate output declines by about 15% and cumulative deaths are reduced by .3%. Much of this welfare gain comes from isolating infected individuals. When individuals who are suspected to be infected are isolated without any testing, optimal policy delivers a welfare gain equivalent to a 2% increase in permanent consumption.

The Hammer and the Scalpel: On the Economics of Indiscriminate versus Targeted Isolation Policies during Pandemics

10.3386/w27483

We study the effects of testing policy on voluntary social distancing and the spread of an infection. Agents decide their social activity level, which determines a social network over which the virus spreads. Testing enables the isolation of infected individuals, slowing down the infection. But greater testing also reduces voluntary social distancing or increases social activity, exacerbating the spread of the virus. We show that the effect of testing on infections is non-monotone. This non-monotonicity also implies that the optimal testing policy may leave some of the testing capacity of society unused.

Testing, Voluntary Social Distancing and the Spread of an Infection

10.3386/w26902

This note lays out the basic Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) epidemiological model of contagion, with a target audience of economists who want a framework for understanding the effects of social distancing and containment policies on the evolution of contagion and interactions with the economy. A key parameter, the asymptomatic rate (the fraction of the infected that are not tested under current guidelines), is not well estimated in the literature because tests for the coronavirus have been targeted at the sick and vulnerable, however it could be estimated by random sampling of the population. In this simple model, different policies that yield the same transmission rate β have the same health outcomes but can have very different economic costs. Thus, one way to frame the economics of shutdown policy is as finding the most efficient policies to achieve a given β, then determining the path of β that trades off the economic cost against the cost of excess lives lost by overwhelming the health care system.

Data Gaps and the Policy Response to the Novel Coronavirus

10.3386/w27018

Using the 2012-13 American Time Use Survey, I find that both who people spend time with and how they spend it affect their happiness, adjusted for numerous demographic and economic variables. Satisfaction among married individuals increases most with additional time spent with spouse. Among singles, satisfaction decreases most as more time is spent alone. Assuming that lock-downs constrain married people to spend time solely with their spouses, simulations show that their happiness may have been increased compared to before the lock-downs; but sufficiently large losses of work time and income reverse this inference. Simulations demonstrate clearly that, assuming lock-downs impose solitude on singles, their happiness was reduced, reductions that are made more severe by income and work losses.

Lock-downs, Loneliness and Life Satisfaction

10.3386/w27144

Millions of goods and services are now unavailable in many countries due to the current coronavirus pandemic, dramatically impacting on the construction of key economic statistics used for informing policy. This situation is unprecedented; hence methods to address it have not previously been developed. Current advice to national statistical offices from the IMF, Eurostat and the UN is shown to result in downward bias in the CPI and upward bias in real consumption. We conclude that the only way to produce a meaningful CPI within the lockdown period is through establishing a continuous consumer expenditure survey.

Measuring Real Consumption and CPI Bias under Lockdown Conditions

10.3386/w27212

Recent outbreaks of infectious pathogens such as Zika, Ebola, and COVID-19 have underscored the need for the dependable availability of vaccines against emerging infectious diseases (EIDs). The cost and risk of R&D programs and uniquely unpredictable demand for EID vaccines have discouraged vaccine developers, and government and nonprofit agencies have been unable to provide timely or sufficient incentives for their development and sustained supply. We analyze the economic returns of a portfolio of EID vaccine assets, and find that under realistic financing assumptions, the expected returns are significantly negative, implying that the private sector is unlikely to address this need without public-sector intervention. We have sized the financing deficit for this portfolio and analyze several potential solutions, including price increases, enhanced public-private partnerships, and subscription models through which individuals would pay annual fees to obtain access to a portfolio of vaccines in the event of an outbreak.

Financing Vaccines for Global Health Security

10.3386/w27423

Recent dramatic and deadly increases in global wildfire activity have increased attention on the causes of wildfires, their consequences, and how risk from fire might be mitigated. Here we bring together data on the changing risk and societal burden of wildfire in the US. We estimate that nearly 50 million homes are currently in the wildland-urban interface in the US, a number increasing by 1 million houses every 3 years. Using a statistical model that links satellite-based fire and smoke data to pollution monitoring stations, we estimate that wildfires have accounted for up to 25% of PM2.5 in recent years across the US, and up to half in some Western regions. We then show that ambient exposure to smoke-based PM2.5 does not follow traditional socioeconomic exposure gradients. Finally, using stylized scenarios, we show that fuels management interventions have large but uncertain impacts on health outcomes, and that future health impacts from climate-change-induced wildfire smoke could approach projected overall increases in temperature-related mortality from climate change. We draw lessons for research and policy.

The Changing Risk and Burden of Wildfire in the US

10.3386/w27136

We take this question to be isomorphic to, "What Keeps Fixed Exchange Rates Fixed?" and address it with analysis familiar in exchange-rate economics. Stablecoins solve the volatility problem by pegging to a national currency, typically the US dollar, and are used as vehicles for exchanging national currencies into non-stable cryptocurrencies, with some stablecoins having a ratio of trading volume to outstanding supply exceeding one daily. Using a rich dataset of signed trades and order books on multiple exchanges, we examine how peg-sustaining arbitrage stabilizes the price of the largest stablecoin, Tether. We find that stablecoin issuance, the closest analogue to central-bank intervention, plays only a limited role in stabilization, pointing instead to stabilizing forces on the demand side. Following Tether's introduction to the Ethereum blockchain in 2019, we find increased investor access to arbitrage trades, and a decline in arbitrage spreads from 70 to 30 basis points. We also pin down which fundamentals drive the two-sided distribution of peg-price deviations: Premiums are due to stablecoins' role as a safe haven, exhibiting, for example, premiums greater than 100 basis points during the COVID-19 crisis of March 2020; discounts derive from liquidity effects and collateral concerns.

What Keeps Stablecoins Stable?

Despite evidence to the contrary, three common myths persist about federal regulations. The first myth is that many regulations concern the environment, but in fact only a small minority of regulations are environmental. The second myth is that most regulations contain quantitative estimates of costs or benefits. However, these quantitative estimates appear rarely in published rules, contradicting the impression given by executive orders and Office of Management and Budget guidance, which require cost-benefit analysis (CBA) and clearly articulate sound economic principles for conducting CBA. Environmental rules have relatively higher-quality CBAs, at least by the low standards of other federal rules. The third myth, which is particularly relevant to the historic regulations promulgated during the COVID-19 pandemic, is the misperception that regulatory costs are primarily clerical, rather than opportunity or resource costs. If technocrats have triumphed in the regulatory arena, their victory has not been earned by the merits of their analysis.

10.3386/w27233

Three Myths about Federal Regulation

The UK faces a second wave of coronavirus infections this winter if the country’s testing and contact tracing system doesn’t improve by the time schools fully reopen and people return to workplaces, researchers have warned.

Opening schools in UK without more testing risks covid-19 second wave

Extensive empirical evidence suggests that there is a maximal number of people with whom an individual can maintain stable social relationships (the Dunbar number). We argue that this arises as a consequence of a natural phase transition in the dynamic self-organization among N individuals within a social system. We present the calculated size dependence of the scaling properties of complex social network models to argue that this collective behavior is an enhanced form of collective intelligence. Direct calculation establishes that the complexity of social networks as measured by their scaling behavior is nonmonotonic, peaking around 150, thereby providing a theoretical basis for the value of the Dunbar number. Thus, we establish a theory-based bridge spanning the gap between sociology and psychology.

10.1073/pnas.2006875117

Relating size and functionality in human social networks through complexity

2008.01585

The COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped the demand for goods and services worldwide. The combination of a public health emergency, economic distress, and disinformation-driven panic have pushed customers and vendors towards the shadow economy. In particular Dark Web Marketplaces (DWMs), commercial websites easily accessible via free software, have gained significant popularity. Here, we analyse 472,372 listings extracted from 23 DWMs between January 1, 2020 and July 7, 2020. We identify 518 listings directly related to COVID-19 products and monitor the temporal evolution of product categories including Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), medicines (e.g., hydroxyclorochine), and medical frauds(e.g., vaccines). Finally, we compare trends in their temporal evolution with variations in public attention, as measured by Twitter posts and Wikipedia page visits. We reveal how the online shadow economy has evolved during the COVID-19 pandemic and highlight the importance of a continuous monitoring of DWMs, especially when real vaccines or cures become available and are potentially in short supply. We anticipate our analysis will be of interest both to researchers and public agencies focused on the protection of public health.

The COVID-19 online shadow economy

Modern large engineered network systems normally work in cooperation and incorporate dependencies between their components for purposes of efficiency and regulation. Such dependencies may become a major risk since they can cause small-scale failures to propagate throughout the system. Thus, the dependent nodes could be a natural target for malicious attacks that aim to exploit these vulnerabilities. Here we consider a type of targeted attack that is based on the dependencies between the networks. We study strategies of attacks that range from dependency-first to dependency-last, where a fraction 1−p<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mrow><mn>1</mn><mo>−</mo><mi>p</mi></mrow></math> of the nodes with dependency links, or nodes without dependency links, respectively, are initially attacked. We systematically analyze, both analytically and numerically, the percolation transition of partially interdependent networks, where a fraction q<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mi>q</mi></math> of the nodes in each network are dependent on nodes in the other network. We find that for a broad range of dependency strength q<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mi>q</mi></math>, the “dependency-first” attack strategy is actually less effective, in terms of lower critical percolation threshold pc<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><msub><mi>p</mi><mi>c</mi></msub></math>, compared with random attacks of the same size. In contrast, the “dependency-last” attack strategy is more effective, i.e., higher pc<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><msub><mi>p</mi><mi>c</mi></msub></math>, compared with a random attack. This effect is explained by exploring the dynamics of the cascading failures initiated by dependency-based attacks. We show that while “dependency-first” strategy increases the short-term impact of the initial attack, in the long term the cascade slows down compared with the case of random attacks and vice versa for “dependency-last.” Our results demonstrate that the effectiveness of attack strategies over a system of interdependent networks should be evaluated not only by the immediate impact but mainly by the accumulated damage during the process of cascading failures. This highlights the importance of understanding the dynamics of avalanches that may occur due to different scenarios of failures in order to design resilient critical infrastructures.

102, 022301

Dependency-based targeted attacks in interdependent networks

Those who sense that this grand experiment in working from home comes with plenty of downsides — longer days, more meetings and more emails to answer — are now backed up by data

Remote work really does mean longer days — and more meetings

There have been several attempts to predict mortality from COVID-19 in the UK, including calculation of age-based case fatality rates1Verity R Okell LC Dorigatti I et al.Estimates of the severity of coronavirus disease 2019: a model-based analysis.Lancet Infect Dis. 2020; 20: 669-677Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (191) Google Scholar and relative risk (RR) of mortality.2Banerjee A Pasea L Harris S et al.Estimating excess 1-year mortality associated with the COVID-19 pandemic according to underlying conditions and age: a population-based cohort study.Lancet. 2020; 395: 1715-1725Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (9) Google Scholar David Spiegelhalter said that “roughly speaking, we might say that getting COVID-19 is like packing a year's worth of risk into a week or two”.3Spiegelhalter D How much “normal” risk does COVID represent?.https://medium.com/wintoncentre/how-much-normal-risk-does-covid-represent-4539118e1196Date: March 21, 2020Date accessed: June 29, 2020Google ScholarIn response to these predictions, we decided to calculate the excess mortality in the Oxford Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) Research and Surveillance Centre (RSC) cohort. The RCGP RSC cohort has been recruited to be nationally representative,4de Lusignan S Dorward J Correa A et al.Risk factors for SARS-CoV-2 among patients in the Oxford Royal College of General Practitioners Research and Surveillance Centre primary care network: a cross-sectional study.Lancet Infect Dis. 2020; (published online May 15.)https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30371-6Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Google Scholar and the mortality data for the cohort align well with those from the Office of National Statistics (ONS; appendix p 1).

10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30632-0

Excess mortality from COVID-19 in an English sentinel network population