Business & Entrepreneurship

The economy and coronavirus pandemic were two of the top issues for voters in the 2020 election, according to exit poll surveys. Notably, 52% of voters said controlling the pandemic was more important, even if it hurts the economy. But what if we didn’t have to choose?

Three experts from the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis weigh in on President Trump’s record, the state of the economy and what to expect from a second Trump term or a Biden administration.

At a time when evictions and mortgage defaults have been likened to an oncoming tsunami across America, a big-data study of loan-to-value ratios in the wake of the 2007-08 recession carries a cautionary forecast for vexing economic weather ahead: The higher a worker’s outstanding mortgage relative to their home value, the worse their future income growth and job mobility.

In this age of coronavirus, with vaccine experimentation moving at historic pace to the clinical trials phase, the ideal inoculation policy would emphasize age more than work-exposure risk, according to a study involving Washington University in St. Louis economists.

A federal moratorium on evictions is just one piece of the puzzle. Without comprehensive solutions, we could be facing a repeat of the 2007-08 financial crisis, said Radhakrishnan Gopalan, a finance expert at Washington University in St. Louis who has studied the effect of health insurance on home payment delinquency.

President Donald Trump issued a presidential proclamation this week that will suspend most new H-1B and other visas through the end of the year — a move the administration said was to protect jobs for unemployed Americans affected by COVID-19. The industries most reliant on visas to fill open positions, however, have relatively low unemployment rates, according to an Olin Business School expert at Washington University in St. Louis.

Relaxing stay-at-home social and business policies will be accompanied by increases in the infection rate, and the race for a vaccine will lose its value to big Pharma almost with each passing day. Those are the main findings by two economists from Washington University in St. Louis and another from the Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis, who investigated the properties of the optimal lockdown policy.

The U.S. sports blackout because of the pandemic has left at least a $12 billion crater in the national economy. And even if stadiums and arenas light up anew soon, they won’t look the same. A sports business expert from the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis doesn’t expect the NBA, NHL and Major League Baseball to welcome fans if/when they return in 2020, for example.

If the post-pandemic economic return includes minimum-wage increases across a few or many states, research led by Washington University in St. Louis scientists in the Olin Business School suggests that some positive and negative effects for U.S. workers follow in the two years after implementation.

The coronavirus pandemic has shattered and shuttered businesses. As businesses gradually continue to reopen across the United States, three Olin Business School experts at Washington University in St. Louis offer insights into potential opportunities that could help businesses to emerge from the economic storm.