Purchasing Power to the People: An Agent-Based Simulation of Pandemic Economic Recovery

This paper applies an agent based model to estimate the economic effects of the Coronavirus pandemic on the US economy. In order to overcome uncertainty over the impact of the pandemic on employment and consumer spending this analysis employs a range of potential levels of resulting unemployment, levels of job return after the pandemic and impacts on consumer spending. Results indicate that while the immediate level of unemployment impacts the initial magnitude of the economic effects post-pandemic economic performance and recovery is largely driven by changes in consumer spending. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.