MORIMOTO KEIICHI
   Department   Undergraduate School  , School of Political Science and Economics
   Position   Associate Professor
Language English
Publication Date 2022/10
Type Academic Journal
Peer Review Peer reviewed
Title Ambiguity in a pandemic recession, asset prices, and lockdown policy
Contribution Type Co-authored (first author)
Journal Journal of Public Economic Theory
Journal TypeAnother Country
Publisher Wiley-Blackwell
Volume, Issue, Page 24(5),pp.1039-1070
Authorship Lead author
Author and coauthor Keiichi Morimoto, Shiba Suzuki
Details Using an asset pricing model of a multi-sector production economy with pandemic disasters, we explain the average stock price boom and significant cross-sectional variation of stock returns in the US and Japan during the COVID-19 pandemic recession. Two features of the pandemic, ambiguity and sector-specific shocks, are crucial determinants of the unusual asset price dynamics. Extending the model, we analyze the welfare effects of lockdown policies during pandemics for heterogeneous households and obtain the following results. Enforcing a lockdown improves the welfare of the asset-holders and the household working in the sector with positive sector-specific shocks. A Pareto optimal lockdown policy controls the tightness of the lockdown so as to maximize the welfare of the household working in the sector with negative sector- specific shocks.
DOI 10.1111/jpet.12591
PermalinkURL https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jpet.12591