In the paper, 'Coronavirus Perceptions and Econcomic Anxiety', authors Thiemo Fetzer (University of Warwick), Lukas Hensel (University of Oxford), Johannes Hermle (University of California, Berkeley) and Christopher Roth (University of Warwick), provide one of the first systematic assessments of the development and determinants of economic anxiety at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Using a global dataset on internet searches and two representative surveys from the US, they document a substantial increase in economic anxiety during and after the arrival of the coronavirus. They also document a large dispersion in beliefs about the pandemic risk factors of the coronavirus, and demonstrate that these beliefs causally affect individuals' economic anxieties. Finally, They show that individuals' mental models of infectious disease spread understate non-linear growth and shape the extent of economic anxiety.
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