That's Interesting
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FRBSF – Longer-Run Economic Consequences of Pandemics
19th April, 2020How do major pandemics affect economic activity in the medium to longer term? Is it consistent with what economic theory prescribes? Since these are rare events, historical evidence over many centuries is required.
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FRBSL – Corporate Bond Spreads and the Pandemic
19th April, 2020The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant disruption in economic activity across the globe. What has been the effects of the ongoing pandemic and some of the policy responses on the corporate bond market?
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FRBSL – How the Impact of Social Distancing Ripples through the Economy
08th April, 2020While COVID-19 is having a devastating impact on the U.S. economy, its impact across industries is likely to be heterogeneous. High contact-intensive industries—ones that rely more on face-to-face interactions—are likely be more negatively affected.
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Music Is Truly a Universal Language: New Research Shows That Music Worldwide Has Important Commonalities
08th April, 2020Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s description of music as a universal language has become a well-worn cliché, usually uttered in a sentimental and not particularly serious way. In the sciences, the “universal language” hypothesis in music has been taken far more seriously.
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Isaac Newton Conceived of His Most Groundbreaking Ideas During the Great Plague of 1665
08th April, 2020Health experts worldwide say home is the best place to be right now to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Many lifesaving discoveries have been made in the wake of epidemics, such as Shakespeare, who wrote some of his best works during outbreaks of plague in London. But the best role model of productivity in a time of quarantine, is perhaps Isaac Newton. During the years 1665-67, the time of the Great Plague of London, Newton’s “genius was unleashed,” writes biographer Philip Steele. “The precious material that resulted was a new understanding of the world.”
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FRBSF – The Uncertainty Channel of the Coronavirus
30th March, 2020The outbreak of the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, has severely disrupted economic activity through various supply and demand channels. The pandemic can also have pervasive economic impact by raising uncertainty. In the past, sudden and outsized spikes in uncertainty have led to large and protracted increases in unemployment and declines in inflation.
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The National Emergency Library Makes 1.5 Million Books Free to Read Right Now
30th March, 2020While the coronavirus has closed physical libraries in countries all around the world, more resources for books open to the public on the internet. Most recently, we have the Internet Archive’s opening of the National Emergency Library, “a collection of books that supports emergency remote teaching, research activities, independent scholarship, and intellectual stimulation while universities, schools, training centers, and libraries are closed”.
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