COVID-19 Research

I AM NO LONGER UPDATING THIS PAGE. YOU CAN VISIT MY PUBLICATION PAGE TO KNOW MORE ABOUT MY RECENT RESEARCH RELATED TO COVID-19 The COVID-19 pandemic is having dramatic ramifications throughout the world. Its negative impacts on the world economy will be felt well into the future.

In partnership with NGOs, researchers and governments in developing countries I am conducting rapid actionable research to communicate the research findings to policy makers. In addition to providing awareness on COVID-19 and related health issues, I am conducting research on households and firms to quickly assess the lives and livelihoods of the poor and the vulnerable communicates in developing countries.

I hope my research will provide evidence to understand and monitor the evolving socioeconomic vulnerabilities and the resultant effects on poor people.

As the Director of the CDES , I am also organizing a webinar series Covid-19 and Beyond with leading scholars and policy-makers speaking on broader policy issues to tackle both health and economic fallout due to Covid-19.

Opinion Pieces/blogs based on academic papers on COVID-19

  1. Low-Tech Solutions' to Address Learning Loss | link
  2. Vaccine inequity? Is Bangladesh suffering the Titanic's fate? | link
  3. Covid-19 and mental health: Improving women's mental well-being via telecounselling | link
  4. How is the pandemic affecting mental health in developing countries? | link
  5. Microenterprises are struggling and in need of support | link
  6. Covid-19: Addressing stigma and misconceptions | link
  7. Delivering COVID-19 Information across the Digital Divide | link
  8. Social protection in the time of Covid-19: Is Bangladesh doing enough? | link
  9. How vulnerable are the small businesses? | link
  10. Food insecurity during Covid-19 | link
  11. Covid-19 testing and health sector resource mobilisation | link
  12. Covid-19 and the food crisis in Bangladesh: a proposal for action, A Global Development Network (GDN) blogpost | link
  13. GDP growth during and after shutdown: Viewed through electricity generation | link to newspaper
    14. | link to version with detailed calculation
  14. Covid19 and Group Testing: A possible way to enhance testing and contact tracing (Newspaper article In Bengali) | link
  15. COVID-19 testing by age: A road map back to work? | link
  16. The challenges of the coronavirus crisis for developing economies, interview with the Global Labour Organisation. | link
  17. Containing COVID-19 in Bangladesh, Published by the East Asia Forum | link
  18. Nine Concerns About the Centre's 1.7 Lakh Crore Package, Published by the WIRE | link
  19. Feeding the poorest 50 million people in Bangladesh: An alternative proposal (Newspaper article In Bengali). | link

For more details, see the webpage at the CDES here| link

Visit my facebook page and twitter page (@AsadIslamBD) for my interviews, and opinion pieces.

** This page will be updated regularly as I finish writing the papers. All credits go to the team of researchers, co-authors, fieldworkers, NGOs working for these and related projects**

Papers/Work-in-Progress: Based on Rapid Surveys on COVID-19

  1. Addressing Vaccine Hesitancy using Local Ambassadors: A Randomized Controlled Trial in Indonesia, with Gita Kusnadi, Jahen Rezki, Armand Sim, Giovanni van Empel, Michael Vlassopoulos, and Yves Zenou | PAPER
  2. Delivering remote learning using a low-tech solution: Evidence from an RCT during school closures, with Hashibul Hasan, Choon Wang and Michael Vlassopoulos| PAPER
  3. Improving Women's Mental Health During a Pandemic, with Michael Vlassopoulos, Abu Siddique, Tabassum Rahman, Deb Pakrashi, and Firoz Ahmed, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics forthcoming | PAPER
  4. Public Support in the United States for Global Equity in Vaccine Pricing, with Lisa Chan, Gaurav Datt, Birendra Rai and Liang Choon Wang, Nature: Scientific Reports , 12, 8960:2022
  5. Awareness Campaigns during COVID-19 and Health Behavior: Evidence from Two Rapid Randomized Experiments in Bangladesh and India, with Abu Siddique, Tabassum Rahman, Deb Pakrashi, and Firoz Ahmed, Review of Economics and Statistics forthcoming | PAPER
  6. Telementoring and homeschooling during school closures: A randomized experiment in rural Bangladesh, with Hashibul Hassan, Choon Wang, and Abu Siddique, with Hashibul Hassan, Choon Wang, and Abu Siddique, R&R Economic Journal | PAPER
  7. Stigma and Misconception in the time of COVID-19 Pandemic: A Field Experiment in India, with Choon Wang, Michael Vlassopoulos, and Deb Pakrashi, Social Science and Medicine ,278, 113966, June 2021 | PAPER
  8. Income loss and wellbeing during COVID-19 lockdown in rural Bangladesh: Evidence from large household surveys, with Tabassum Rahman, Firoz Ahmed, Deb Pakrashi, and Abu Siddique, Bangladesh Development Studies [Invited], forthcoming | PAPER
  9. Determinants and Dynamics of Food Insecurity During COVID-19, with Firoz Ahmed, Deb Pakrashi, Tabassum Rahman, and Abu Siddique, Food Policy ,101 (May): 102066, 2021 | PAPER
  10. Food insecurity and mental health of women during COVID-19: Evidence from a developing country, with Golam Hasnain and Tabassum Rahman, PloS One ,16(7): e0255392, 2021| PAPER
  11. The Impact of COVID19 Pandemic on the Small Firms in Developing Countries, with Atiya Rahman, Margaret Triyana and Xing Xia | Slides
  12. Financial Literacy and its role in helping the poor to cope with the impact of COVID-19, with Russell Smyth and Vy Nguyen | project Info