Measuring business dynamics in real time

Thibaut Duprey, Artur Kotlicki, Daniel Rigobon and Philip Schnattinger

Just as doctors monitor in real time the vital signs of their hospitalised patients to determine the best course of treatment, economists are turning towards a real-time tracking of economic conditions to inform policy decisions (for example, through proxy for GDP and inflation). In a recent paper, we introduce a new quasi-real time estimation of business opening and closure rates using data from Google Places – the dataset behind the Google Maps service. We find that the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions in Canada coincides with a wave of re-entry of temporarily closed businesses, suggesting that government support may have facilitated the survival of hibernating businesses.

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Booming entrepreneurship during the Covid-19 pandemic

Saleem Bahaj, Sophie Piton and Anthony Savagar

Recessions typically discourage entrepreneurs from starting new businesses. During the Great Recession, a ‘generation’ of start-ups went missing which contributed to a slow recovery in employment. Two years after the pandemic started, evidence for the UK suggests a very different story: the pandemic inspired many entrepreneurs to start new businesses and this supported the recovery in employment.

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What did we learn from working from home during Covid?

Lena Anayi, John Lewis and Misa Tanaka

Since the onset of Covid-19, firms and workers have adopted and adapted to new working arrangements, which involved some workers primarily or exclusively working from home (WFH). What lessons – if any – can be drawn from this experience to inform future of work? A previous blog post examined how WFH might affect productivity. This blog post reviews more recent research on the experience of WFH during Covid, and considers what can be learnt about the impact of WFH on time use, workplace interactions and productivity.

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Climate and capital: some outstanding issues

Marco Bardoscia, Benjamin Guin and Misa Tanaka

There is a lively debate about whether and how capital regulations for banks and insurers should be adjusted in response to climate change. The Bank of England will host a conference later this year to discuss the points in favour of and against adjustments to the regulatory capital framework to take account of climate-related financial risks. The call for papers asks for research on appropriate capital tools to address these risks, eg whether risks point to microprudential tools which are firm specific or rather macroprudential system-wide ones. Moreover, it asks for research on an appropriate time horizon over which the risks should be considered and how scenarios and forward-looking data should be used. This post will review the existing literature and identify some key gaps.

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