Economic Resilience in a Pandemic: Did COVID-19 Policy Effects Override Industry Diversity Impacts in Australia?

The industry diversity thesis of economic resilience to economic shocks is embedded in community development policy across Australia. The idea being that in the event of an economic shock some industries will prove more recession-proof than others. The greater the industry diversity, the greater the likelihood of off-setting industry effects, resulting in greater economic resilience. The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated restrictions created a unique natural experiment to explore whether the industry diversity thesis holds true under the conditions of a global health pandemic. In this policy paper, we use JobKeeper applications as a proxy for decreased economic resilience. We explore if Australian local government areas (LGAs) with higher industry diversity had less necessity for JobKeeper. We also briefly consider if concentrations of certain industries acted as a better economic buffer to the COVID-19 economic shock. We observe that as diversity increases, economic resilience strengthens except for Victoria (where the association is inverted). This observation has important implications for current and future policy formation and implementation across all layers of government. © 2023 The Authors. Economic Papers;A journal of applied economics and policy published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of The Economic Society of Australia.

An analysis of preferences of convention attendees in the time of Covid-19 pandemic

This study is to clarify the current situation of convention business and analyze the preferences of convention attendees in the time of Covid-19 pandemic. To clarify the research objectives, this study employed the statistical data of questionnaire survey on the perceptions of convention attendees in the Japanese Society of Hot Spring Science, Japan. The questionnaire survey was conducted in November 2020. The survey instrument was divided into 4 parts: demographic information, reasons for participation, types of meeting, and priority of countermeasures against Covid-19. Even in the time of Covid-19, 60% of the respondents answered that they hope to participate in convention by onsite meeting because they are willing to meet other participants who can share their knowledge. On the other hand, there are advantages such as no transportation fees and infection prevention by holding convention in online. Moreover, online meetings give a new business opportunity for IT-related jobs. However, holding online meeting does not bring economic impact to local area in the perspective of tourism industry. Without economic impact to local area, local tourism industry starts to decline. It means loss of employment and cultural properties. During Covid-19 pandemic, online meetings can be considered as an option. However, after the Covid-19 pandemic gets resolved, onsite meeting or at least hybrid meetings will be recommended. © 2021 IEEE.

An exploration of methods using social media to examine local attitudes towards mask-wearing during a pandemic

During the COVID-19 health crisis, local public officials continue to expend considerable energy encouraging citizens to comply with prevention measures in order to reduce the spread of infection. During the pandemic, mask-wearing has been accepted among health officials as a simple preventative measure;however, some local areas have been more likely to comply than others. This paper explores methods to better understand local attitudes towards mask-wearing as a tool for public health officials' situational awareness when preparing public messaging campaigns. This exploration compares three methods to explore local attitudes: sentiment analysis, n-grams, and hashtags. We also explore hashtag co-occurrence networks as a possible starting point to begin the filtering process. The results show that while sentiment analysis is quick and easy to employ, the results offer little insight into specific local attitudes towards mask-wearing, while examining hashtags and hashtag co-occurrence networks may be used a tool for a more robust understanding of local areas when attempting to gain situational awareness. © 2021 Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM. All rights reserved.

The Role of Public Health Expenditures in COVID-19 control: Evidence from Local Governments in England.

For over 150 years the local health departments of England have been critical in controlling 19th and 20th century infectious epidemics. However, recent administrative changes have hollowed out their flexibility to serve communities. We use administrative data on past budgetary allocations per capita to public health departments at upper tier local areas (UTLAs) of England to examine whether public health funding levels were correlated with more rapid control of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic between March and July of 2020. The dependent variable was the number of days between a UTLA's 10th case of COVID-19 and the day when new cases per 100,000 peaked and began to decline. Our models controlled for regional socio-economic factors. We found no correlation between local public health expenditure and the speed of control of COVID-19. However, overall public expenditure allocated to improve local areas helped reduce time to reach peak. Contrary to expectation, more dense areas such as London experienced shorter duration. Higher income areas had more rapid success in accelerating the time of the first peak in the first wave of their local COVID-19 incidence. We contribute to understanding the impact of how public expenditure and socio-economic factors affect an epidemic.