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The economic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic was different from a typical recession. Governments had intentionally restricted activity in significant parts of the economy to reduce the in-person interactions that might spread the virus. As a consequence, businesses that were productive and profitable in February 2020 were in grave danger of bankruptcy just weeks later. Recognizing this, governments in advanced economies provided various types of support to aid business continuity and preserve worker-firm links. In this volume, we present preliminary evidence on the efficacy and efficiency of a number of these fiscal interventions. We do so through a comparative lens, by studying the different decisions reached by policymakers in eight Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development member states: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.
List of contents
Preserving Employer-Employee Links in the COVID-19 Era
Michael R. Strain and Stan Veuger
1. The Value of Job Matches
Ian M. Schmutte
2. Did the Australian JobKeeper Program Save Jobs by Subsidizing Temporary Layoffs?
Jeff Borland and Jennifer Hunt
3. The Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy as an Employer-Based Response to the Pandemic: First Steps, Missteps, and Next Steps
Miles Corak
4. Whatever It Takes: Subsidizing Short-Time Work During the COVID-19 Pandemic in France
Xavier Jaravel
5. German Labor Market Policy During and After the COVID-19 Recession
Tom Krebs
6. COVID-19: The Italian Job
Russell Cooper and Immo Schott
7. The Dutch Experience with Job-Preserving Policy During the Coronavirus Pandemic
Roel Beetsma and Raymond Gradus
8. Labor Hoarding and Employment Protection During the COVID-19 Crisis in a Dual Labor Market: Spain
Juan F. Jimeno
9. Policies to Preserve Worker-Firm Links During the Pandemic: Lessons from the UK's Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme
Jonathan Cribb and Paul Johnson
10. How Was the US Government Able to Borrow So Much During the COVID-19 Pandemic?
Ricardo Reis
About the Authors
About the author
Michael R. Strain is the director of Economic Policy Studies and Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. He is a research fellow with the Institute of Labor Economics in Bonn, a research affiliate with the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an elected member of the National Academy of Social Insurance.
Stan Veuger is a senior fellow in economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. He is also the editor of AEI Economic Perspectives, as well as a fellow at the IE School of Global and Public Affairs and at Tilburg University.
