Guest editorial: Assessment of the impacts of COVID-19 and government reactions to it on inequality and poverty reduction

An assessment of the policies and a review of the heterogeneous impact provide information valuable for resource allocations, cross-country cooperation, economic recovery and development and inequalities and poverty reduction around the world. [...]the measures could not mitigate the initial income reduction and only had a temporary positive effect on consumption expenditure. [...]education disparities were observed between 25 and 50%.

The response of household debt to COVID-19 using a neural networks VAR in OECD.

This paper investigates responses of household debt to COVID-19-related data like confirmed cases and confirmed deaths within a neural networks panel VAR for OECD countries. Our model also includes a plethora of non-pharmaceutical and pharmaceutical interventions. We opt for a global neural networks panel VAR (GVAR) methodology that nests all OECD countries in the sample. Because linear factor models are unable to capture the variability in our data set, the use of an artificial neural network (ANN) method permits to capture this variability. The number of factors, as well as the number of intermediate layers, is determined using the marginal likelihood criterion and we estimate the GVAR with MCMC techniques. We also report δ-values that capture the dominance of each individual country in the network. In terms of dominant countries, the UK, the USA, and Japan dominate interconnections within the network, but also countries like Belgium, Netherlands, and Brazil. Results reveal that household debt positively responds to COVID-19 infections and deaths. Lockdown measures such as stay-at-home advice, and closing schools, all have a positive impact on household debt, though they are of transitory nature. However, vaccinations and testing appear to negatively affect household debt.

Understanding the COVID-19 tourist psyche: The Evolutionary Tourism Paradigm.

Studies across the social sciences are making increasing use of an evolutionary perspective. Yet, despite its potential, the application of evolutionary psychology in tourism research is scant. Evolutionary psychology is arguably one of the most useful approaches to understanding the effects of the Coronavirus pandemic on the tourist's psyche. This research highlights, explains, and empirically demonstrates the vast untapped potential of this perspective for post-COVID-19 tourism research. The authors develop an Evolutionary Tourism Paradigm, which is based on biological epistemology and theory to address questions in post-COVID-19 tourism research. This paradigm is brought to life through a developed ocean and islands model, and its utility for future research endeavors on the Coronavirus pandemic is empirically demonstrated in two studies.

COVID-19 and gradual adjustment in the tourism, hospitality, and related industries

In this Note, we take up the problem of post-COVID-19 gradual adjustment in the industry as well as whether and to what extent opening with limited capacity might be feasible. We find that (i) reopening gradually requiring only nonnegative profits is quite feasible but (ii) reopening requiring the same level of profit as in the pre-COVID-19 period is considerably more difficult, and seems feasible by reopening at capacity near 33%. Lower capacities would require governmental subsidies which could vary considerably from hotel to hotel.