COVID-19 Pandemic and Economic Policy

Economic analyses on the impact of COVID-19 pandemic and on appropriate policy measures for tackling the crisis are advancing very rapidly. This paper provides an overview of the progress of such studies and their implications in policy planning. A variety of extended epidemiological models augmented with economic behavior have been developed and various simulation analyses of the optimal policy design have been presented. In parallel with these efforts, empirical studies using high-frequency, real-time big data have emerged. However, the value of key parameters such as infection, recovery, and death rates still involve significant uncertainty, due to the limited data. Further studies are needed to understand, for example, why infection and death rates for Japan remain far lower than in other advanced countries.