The economic reaction to non-pharmaceutical interventions during Covid-19

Policy makers have implemented a set of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to contain the spread of Covid-19 and reduce the burden on health systems. These restrictive measures have had adverse effects on economic activity; however, these negative impacts differ with respect to each country. Based on daily data, this article studies governmental economic responses to the application of NPIs for 59 countries. Furthermore, we assess if these economic responses differ according to the economic and sectoral context of the countries. By applying a counting model to the economic support intensity, our results quantify the average reaction of governments in counterbalancing the imposition of NPIs. We further re-estimate the base model by dividing the countries according to their GDP per capita, the intensity of their service sectors, and the expenditure by tourists. Our results show how each NPI implied a different level of economic support and how the structural characteristics considered were relevant to the decision-making process

Changing structures in transnational research networks: an analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on China's scientific collaborations

Research networks play pivotal roles in the creation and diffusion of knowledge. It is widely acknowledged that frontier research tends to cluster around transnational research networks (TRNs), which also represent strategic tools for nurturing innovation in R&D-intensive companies. Therefore, they are crucial for promoting the rapid development of the knowledge economy in underdeveloped countries. In this context, China's experience is particularly relevant because the country has invested heavily in knowledge production, which is arguably one of the most important structural changes at the global level in recent decades, with important implications for the division of labor and trade among countries. The country has been investing in order to become the scientific world leader, and in this transition, research collaboration, in particular with other countries, can become strategic. In this work, we analyze whether COVID-19 and related research have affected the shape of the network and the intensity of collaborations involving China in the field of health studies, comparing it to the case of the U.S. as the global leader in research (Fry et al., 2020). In particular, we wish to assess whether COVID-19-related research has pushed toward larger and more intensive collaborations internationally than before the pandemic or whether a tendency to closure has prevailed has prevailed. This also means understanding whether COVID-19, as a global phenomenon, has affected China in rising as an international research leader. To do so, we built an original dataset of international, coauthored publications involving China or the U.S. in selected health research fields. Our analysis first shows that COVID-19 research has assumed specific features distinct from other topics in the same research field, shaping research networks in a peculiar way for both China and the U.S. Second, for China, COVID-19 does not appear to have represented an opportunity to further climb up the international research ladder, as it has attracted a relatively low and more volatile number of collaborators from different countries

Innovation, productivity and learning induced by export across European manufacturing firms

This paper analyses the links between R&D, innovation, productivity and exports for European manufacturing firms between 2001 and 2014. In comparison with previous studies, we consider the temporal and spatial dimension of learning-by-exporting. By applying a Heckman equation and GSEM methodology, we find a robust self-selection process from productivity to export and export-induced learning effects in terms of length of time and number of markets. Our results show that firms in leader countries are more sensitive to temporal learning, while spatial learning has more influence for firms in less advanced countries. Our results indicate that the export learning has a different impact depending on the innovation position of each country