News and uncertainty about COVID-19: Survey evidence and short-run economic impact

Abstract

A tailor-made survey documents consumers’ perceptions of the US economy’s response to a large shock: the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey ran at a daily frequency between March 2020 and July 2021. Consumer’s perceptions regarding output and inflation react rapidly. Uncertainty is pervasive. A business-cycle model calibrated to the consumers’ views provides an interpretation. The rise in household uncertainty accounts for two-thirds of the fall in output. Different perceptions about monetary policy can explain why consumers and professional forecasters agree on the recessionary impact, but have sharply divergent views about inflation.

Living in Liquid Times: The Relationships among Job Insecurity, Life Uncertainty, and Psychosocial Well-Being

“…These findings appear to be relevant, particularly, if framed within the contemporary socioeconomic situation. In fact, the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a general state of high uncertainty in the social and economic sphere [ 83 , 111 , 112 , 113 , 114 , 115 , 116 ]. In the recent literature, a substantial number of studies have broadly documented the labor market outcomes of the pandemic period [ 13 ].…”

“…Uncertainty and low predictable situations are generally appraised as stressful leading to stress reactions [ 33 , 45 ]. It has been well documented that the pandemic period has mostly originated an overall increase in uncertainty in many aspects of people’s lives [ 4 , 5 , 11 , 83 , 112 , 114 ]. In this fashion, our findings largely confirm the proposed mediation framework, in which job insecurity is positively related to workers’ life uncertainty and, in turn, their higher levels of burnout and lower levels of job satisfaction.…”

“…Although the detrimental relationships between job insecurity and health outcomes are well established in the scientific literature [ 4 , 5 , 83 , 111 , 112 , 114 ], the underlying process is still a topic of debate among scholars [ 29 ] and current research is more and more focusing on mediators and moderators of job insecurity influence [ 29 , 31 , 63 ]. The present study aimed to address this question by investigating an overlooked mediator of job insecurity, namely life uncertainty.…”

The effect of disinformation about COVID-19 on consumer confidence: Insights from a survey experiment

“…4 Cavazos examines the economic costs stemming from disinformation. 5 Our experimental design capitalizes on the above findings, as well as on the growing consensus in the consumer behavior literature that the pandemic increased uncertainty about macroeconomic trends ( Apergis & Apergis, 2021 ; Detmers et al, 2022 , Dietrich et al, 2022 ). Disinformation about the effectiveness of anti-COVID-19 vaccines is hence particularly relevant in this context.…”

Determination of the Intention of MSMEs Owners Using Sharia Cooperatives in Improving Indonesian Islamic Economic Empowerment

“…COVID-19 has caused major disruptions to the economic sector with a sharp decline in production and consumption activities that have caused a slump in world economic growth. Bank Indonesia in its report on world economic performance predicts a 5.2% contraction in global GDP in 2020 (Dietrich et al, 2022). In fact, Indonesia must try to recover the economy so that it is not threatened with a recession, which endangers the Indonesian economic situation (Hikmawati & Muharam, 2022).…”