U.S. Economic Activity During the Early Weeks of the SARS-Cov-2 Outbreak

Daniel Lewis, Karel Mertens, James H. Stock

NBER Working Paper No. 26954
Issued in April 2020
NBER Program(s):Economic Fluctuations and Growth, Monetary Economics

This paper describes a weekly economic index (WEI) developed to track the rapid economic developments associated with the response to the novel Coronavirus in the United States. The WEI shows a strong and sudden decline in economic activity starting in the week ending March 21, 2020. In the most recent week ending March 28, the WEI indicates economic activity has fallen further to -6.19% scaled to 4 quarter growth in GDP.

Acknowledgments

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Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w26954