Pandemic Shocks and Household Spending*
研究了新冠疫情导致的意外死亡人数（疫情冲击）如何影响美国家庭的日常支出，发现冲击导致消费下降，且低收入家庭降幅更大，加剧了消费不平等。
Abstract We study the response of daily household spending to the surprise number of fatalities of the COVID‐19 pandemic, which we label as a pandemic shock. Based on daily forecasts of the number of fatalities, we construct the surprise component as the difference between the actual and the expected number of deaths. We allow for state‐dependent effects of the shock depending on the position on the curve of infections. Spending falls after the shock and is particularly sensitive to the shock when the number of new infections is strongly increasing. If the number of infections grows moderately, the drop in spending is smaller. We also estimate the effect of the shock across income quartiles. In each state, low‐income households exhibit a significantly larger drop in consumption than high‐income households. Thus, consumption inequality increases after a pandemic shock. Our results hold for the US economy and the key US states. The findings remain unchanged if we choose alternative state‐variables to separate regimes.