Economic costs of COVID-19 for cross-border regions.

In Spring 2020, the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic hit Europe most severely. While empirical evidence regarding the economic costs of the strict lockdown measures enacted during the periods before the widespread diffusion of vaccines is now available, little is known about the economic impact of both strict lockdowns and partial closures on border regions. This is instead a relevant case study to analyze, in particular in the light of the asymmetric nature of border closures. This paper fills this gap and offers two sets of analyses: a first assessment of partial closures, enacted after the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and based on the approach applied to European cross-border regions to measure the costs of legal and administrative barriers (Camagni et al., 2019); and a second measurement based on simulating the impacts of full closures with the Macroeconometric Social Sectoral Territorial (MASST)-4 model (Capello & Caragliu, 2021a). These analyses also allow for the pinpointing of the spatial distribution of economic losses, and to identify whether different regional typologies suffered the highest contraction.

Regional growth and disparities in a post-COVID Europe: A new normality scenario.

This paper addresses the important question "Which European areas will be able to better react to the crisis induced by COVID-19 and how regional disparities will look like?" To provide an answer, a "new normality" scenario is built, comprising the structural changes likely to take place in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic. To develop such scenario, two intermediate steps are necessary, in both cases relying on the use of the latest generation of the MAcroeconomic, Sectoral, Social, Territorial (MASST4) model. First, short-run costs of the COVID-induced lockdowns, in terms of missed GDP, are calculated for all European NUTS2 regions, needed because of the lack of short-run statistics about the extent of the regional costs caused by the lockdowns that will only appear in 2 years. Second, a long-run simulation of the economic rebound expected to take place from 2021 through 2030 is presented, assuming, among other trends, that no further national lockdowns will be undertaken in European countries. In the "new normality" scenario, regional disparity trends will decrease as a result of a decisive rebound of those countries mostly hit by the pandemic.