Business dynamism, sectoral reallocation and productivity in a pandemic.

Asymmetric effects across sectors are the distinctive features of the Covid-19 shock. An Epidemiological-Industry Dynamic model with heterogeneous firms and endogenous firms dynamics mimics the deep recession suffered by sectors characterized by high exposure, the reallocation of entry and exit opportunities across sectors, and the dynamics of aggregate productivity during the first wave of the pandemic. The cleansing effect induced by the Covid-19 crisis is sector-specific.

Deaths during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic: insights from regional patterns in Germany and Poland.

Background: Given the nature of the spread of SARS-CoV-2, strong regional patterns in the fatal consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic related to local characteristics such as population and health care infrastructures were to be expected. In this paper we conduct a detailed examination of the spatial correlation of deaths in the first year of the pandemic in two neighbouring countries - Germany and Poland, which, among high income countries, seem particularly different in terms of the death toll associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis aims to yield evidence that spatial patterns of mortality can provide important clues as to the reasons behind significant differences in the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in these two countries.

Home Alone: Widows' Well-Being and Time.

Unlabelled: Using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE, 2004-17) and time diaries from Poland (2013), the U.S. (2006-16), the U.

Healthier over time? Period effects in health among older Europeans in a step-wise approach to identification.

We examine changes in the level of physical health using longitudinal data on people aged 50+ from nine European countries covering the years from 2004 to 2017. For this purpose we develop a novel approach to identify age, period and cohort effects, which, in contrast to methods relying on mechanical restrictions, uses a step-wise estimation combining information on physical health with data on cognitive abilities. The approach relies on two important assumptions.

Effect of COVID-19 on demand for healthcare in Togo.

Background: Demand-side barriers to health care are as important as supply-side factors in deterring patients from obtaining effective treatment during COVID-19. Developing countries, including Togo, have focused on reducing the risk of health care utilization during this period by ensuring basic health care services as an important policy to improve health outcomes and meet international obligations to make health services accessible.

Methods: The data used to cover all 44 districts in the six (6) health regions of Togo, are from a national home survey.

COVID-19 and the impact of cash transfers on health care use in Togo.

Background: Cash transfer program during pandemics provide a social protection mechanism to improve the health of the most vulnerable households. This article analysis the impact of cash transfers on household demand for health care during Covid-19.

Methods: Using data from the survey conducted from 8th to 17th July 2020 covering all 44 districts in the 6 health regions of Togo under the direction of the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), we used propensity score matching and the ESR model.

A fractional-order SIRD model with time-dependent memory indexes for encompassing the multi-fractional characteristics of the COVID-19.

COVID-19 is a novel coronavirus affecting all the world since December last year. Up to date, the spread of the outbreak continues to complicate our lives, and therefore, several research efforts from many scientific areas are proposed. Among them, mathematical models are an excellent way to understand and predict the epidemic outbreaks evolution to some extent.

Optimal Control of Time-Delay Fractional Equations via a Joint Application of Radial Basis Functions and Collocation Method.

A novel approach to solve optimal control problems dealing simultaneously with fractional differential equations and time delay is proposed in this work. More precisely, a set of global radial basis functions are firstly used to approximate the states and control variables in the problem. Then, a collocation method is applied to convert the time-delay fractional optimal control problem to a nonlinear programming one.

Randomness, Informational Entropy, and Volatility Interdependencies among the Major World Markets: The Role of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The main purpose of our paper is to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on randomness in volatility series of world major markets and to examine its effect on their interconnections. The data set includes equity (Bitcoin and Standard and Poor's 500), precious metals (Gold and Silver), and energy markets (West Texas Instruments, Brent, and Gas). The generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model is applied to the return series.

Renyi entropy and mutual information measurement of market expectations and investor fear during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has seriously affected world economies. In this regard, it is expected that information level and sharing between equity, digital currency, and energy markets has been altered due to the pandemic outbreak. Specifically, the resulting twisted risk among markets is presumed to rise during the abnormal state of world economy.

The impact of COVID-19 pandemic upon stability and sequential irregularity of equity and cryptocurrency markets.

We explore the evolution of the informational efficiency in 45 cryptocurrency markets and 16 international stock markets before and during COVID-19 pandemic. The measures of Largest Lyapunov Exponent (LLE) based on the Rosenstein's method and Approximate Entropy (ApEn), which are robust to small samples, are applied to price time series in order to estimate degrees of stability and irregularity in cryptocurrency and international stock markets. The amount of regularity infers on the unpredictability of fluctuations.

Optimal policies for control of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak.

Understanding the early transmission dynamics of diseases and estimating the effectiveness of control policies play inevitable roles in the prevention of epidemic diseases. To this end, this paper is concerned with the design of optimal control strategies for the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). A mathematical model of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) transmission based on Wuhan's data is considered.

Implications of Social and Material Deprivation for Changes in Health of Older People.

We use the panel structure of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) data for 14 countries to examine the implications of material and social deprivation for health deterioration in old age and mortality. To minimize the potential endogeneity bias, we examine the relationship between deprivation and changes in health rather than levels of health. We include a substantial set of fixed "initial conditions," and extend the controls with health measures, as observed at the initial period.

Modeling interregional research collaborations in German biotechnology using industry directory data.

This article describes a data set to map and model research collaborations in German biotechnology. Underlying micro-data for firms and institutions in the biotech sector together with information on their research collaboration partners have been extracted from a commercial industry directory, the BIOCOM Year and Address book, for 2005 and 2009. The data have been processed and aggregated to the level of NUTS3 regions.

The impact of spousal bereavement on subjective wellbeing: Evidence from the Taiwanese elderly population.

Bereavement is an inevitable event in our life. This paper employs the Taiwanese panel Survey of Health and Living Status of the Elderly (SHLSE) to evaluate the impact of losing a spouse on self-assessed health and subjective well-being measured by depression and life satisfaction. Propensity score matching methods are used to generate a hypothetical bereavement date and a weight for the non-bereaved to create a comparable non-bereaved cohort and a difference-in-differences (DiD) approach is used to estimate the impact of spousal bereavement.

The effect of health care expenditures on self-rated health status and the Health Utility Index: Evidence from Canada.

Studies of the effect of health care expenditures on health status suggest conflicting evidence of a relationship using data from numerous countries. We use data from the Canadian National Population Health Survey and the Canadian Institute for Health Information to estimate the relationship between per capita provincial health care expenditures and both self-assessed health status and the Health Utility Index. Our sample includes all individuals who were 18 years old or over at the beginning of the survey in 1994.

The Time-Varying Relationship between Mortality and Business Cycles in the USA.

We examine the relationship between total mortality, deaths due to motor vehicle accidents, cardiovascular disease and measures of business cycles for the USA, using a time-varying parameter model for the periods 1961-2010. We first present a theoretical model to outline the transmission mechanism from business cycles to health status, to motivate our empirical framework and to explain why the relationship between mortality and the economy may have changed over time. We find overwhelming evidence of structural breaks in the relationship between mortality and business cycles over the sample period.

The effect of physician supply on health status: Canadian evidence.

We estimate the relationship between per capita supply of physicians, both general practitioners and specialists, and health status of Canadians. We use data from the Canadian National Population Health Survey and the Canadian Institute for Health Information. Two measures of quality of life, self-assessed health status and the Health Utility Index, are explored.

Poverty and transitions in health in later life.

Using a sample of Europeans aged 50+ from 12 countries in the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we analyse the role of poor material conditions as a determinant of changes in health over a four- to five-year period. We find that poverty defined with respect to relative income has no effect on changes in health. However, broader measures of poor material conditions, such as subjective poverty or low wealth, significantly increase the probability of transition to poor health among the healthy and reduce the chance of recovery from poor health over the time interval analysed.