What Happened to the US Economy during the 1918 Influenza Pandemic? A View Through High-Frequency Data

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - Chicago
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• DOI: 10.1017/S0022050722000055
• 发表日期: 2022
• 页码: 284-326
• 关键词: gross-national-product; HEALTH; mortality; EPIDEMIC; interventions; pneumonia; cities; index

摘要

An economic downturn coincided with the start of the epidemic but the recession was short and moderate, compared with that of 1920/21. Cross-sectional high-frequency data indicate that the epidemic affected the labor supply sharply but briefly with no ensuing spill-overs; most of the recession, brief as it was, was due to the end of the war. I analyze weekly city-level mortality data and economic indicators with time series methods and structural estimation of an economic-epidemiological model: interventions to hinder the contagion reduced mortality at little economic cost, probably because reduced infections mitigated the impact on the labor force.