The Macroeconomic Effects Of Lockdown Policies

Stéphane Auray and Aurélien Eyquem

Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: A tractable incomplete-market model with unemployment, sticky prices, and a fiscal side is used to quantify the macroeconomic effects of lockdown policies and the miti-gating effects of raising government spending and implementing UI benefit extensions. We find that the effects of lockdown policies, although we are relatively conservative about the size of the lockdown, are huge: unemployment doubles on impact and al-most triples even for relatively short lockdown durations. Output falls dramatically and debt-output ratios increase by several tens of percentage points. In addition, the surge in unemployment risk triggers a rise in precautionary savings that make such shocks Keynesian supply shocks: aggregate demand falls by more than aggregate supply, and lockdown policies are deflationary. Unfortunately, we find that raising public spending and extending UI benefits stimulate aggregate demand or improve risk-sharing but has little effects on output and unemployment, although they do alleviate the welfare losses of lockdown policies for the households.

Keywords: Lockdown; Unemployment; Borrowing constraints; Incomplete markets; Government spending; Unemployment insurance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-04-16
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge, nep-ias and nep-mac
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-03389198v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-03389198v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The macroeconomic effects of lockdown policies (2020)
Working Paper: The Macroeconomic Effects of Lockdown Policies (2020)
Working Paper: The Macroeconomic Effects of Lockdown policies (2020)
Working Paper: The Macroeconomic Effects of Lockdown policies (2020)
Working Paper: The macroeconomic effects of lockdown policies (2020)
Working Paper: The Macroeconomic Effects Of Lockdown Policies (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-03389198

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().