ABSTRACT
This paper presents a novel and unique measure of cross-sectional uncertainty constructed from stock options on individual firms. Cross-sectional uncertainty varied little between 1980 and 1995 and subsequently had three distinct peaks-during the tech boom, the financial crisis, and the coronavirus epidemic. Cross-sectional uncer-tainty has had a mixed relationship with overall economic activity, and aggregate uncertainty is much more powerful for forecasting aggregate growth. The data and moments can be used to calibrate and test structural models of the effects of uncertainty shocks. In interna-tional data, we find similar dynamics and a strong common factor in cross-sectional uncertainty. (JEL D21, D81, E23, E24, E32, G13, O34)
ABSTRACT
During the first and second waves of coronavirus-19 disease, Sardinia had one of the lowest hospitalization and related mortality rates in Europe. However, in contrast with this evidence, the Sardinia population showed a very high frequency of the Neanderthal risk locus variant rs35044562, considered to be a major risk factor for a severe SARS-CoV-2 disease course. We evaluated 358 patients who had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 and 314 healthy Sardinian controls (Italy). Patients were divided according to WHO classification: 120 patients asymptomatic, 90 pauci-symptomatic, 108 with a moderate disease course and 40 severely ill. The allele frequencies of Neanderthal-derived genetic variants reported as being protective (rs1156361) or causative (rs35044562) for severe illness were calculated in patients and controls. The Thalassemia variant (rs11549407), the HLA haplotypes, the KIR genes, as well as KIRs and their HLA class I ligand combinations were also investigated. The rs35044562 and rs1156361 Neanderthal variants revealed a distribution in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (HWE) both in SARS-CoV-2 patients and the control population (X2HWE = 0.82, p = 0.37 and X2HWE = 0.13, p = 0.72, respectively). Our findings reported an increased risk for severe disease in Sardinian patients carrying the rs35044562 high-risk variant [OR 5.32 (95% CI 2.53-12.01), p<0.0001]. Conversely, the protective effect of the HLA-A*02:01~B*18:01~DRB1*03:01 three-loci extended haplotype in the Sardinian population was shown to efficiently contrast the high risk of a severe and devastating outcome of the infection predicted for carriers of the Neanderthal locus [OR 15.47 (95% CI 5.8 - 41.0), p<0.0001]. This result suggests that the balance between risk and protective immunogenetic factors plays an important role in the evolution of COVID-19. A better understanding of these mechanisms may well turn out to be the biggest advantage in the race for the development of more efficient drugs and vaccines.