The PPP and America's small businesses

Unequal access to federal COVID-19 relief. In an analysis of recent data, Sifan Liu and Joseph Parilla find that small businesses in majority-white neighborhoods received PPP loans more quickly than small businesses in majority-Black and majority-Latino or Hispanic neighborhoods.

Has the PPP been effective? In a new paper, Glenn Hubbard and Michael Strain argue that the program achieved its short-run goals, but it is too soon to say whether the program will meet its medium-run goals, including preventing a wave of bankruptcies.

Business credit programs in the pandemic era. The Federal Reserve's Main Street Lending Program for small and medium-sized businesses should take more risks to meet the unique challenges posed by COVID-19, Samuel Hanson, Jeremy Stein, Adi Sunderam, and Eric Zwick contend.

How to help small businesses through the crisis. More than 400,000 small businesses have been lost since the coronavirus crisis began. Steven Hamilton lays out a set of targeted proposals to support small businesses, both now and in the future.

The economics of COVID-19

How has America fared compared to other countries? "The partial recovery of U.S. labor markets in the late spring and summer, and more recent trends in virus cases and deaths, do not change the fundamental fact that both employment and health outcomes for the U.S. during the pandemic have been worse than in almost any other high-income country in the world," writes Harry Holzer.

The rise of covidnomics. To help design policy interventions that contain the virus without crushing the economy, Kaushik Basu presents several thought exercises on effects of COVID-19.

The impact of the pandemic on state and local revenues. Employment by state and local governments represents about 13% of total employment in the United States, and state and local tax revenues represent about 9% of GDP. New research projects that the COVID-19 economic downturn will result in state and local revenue declines of $155 billion in 2020, $167 billion in 2021, and $145 billion in 2022.

For more analysis on the economics of COVID-19, see a new selection of work from the Fall 2020 edition of the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. 

Changing education for the better

Education's role in rebuilding the planet. The COVID-19 economic shutdown has demonstrated how changes in human activity can directly improve the health of the natural world. But long-term change will require a new approach to climate education, Christina Kwauk argues.

Online learning and racial equity. On average, Black, Hispanic, and Asian students are around 15 percentage points more likely than white students to live in a "remote-only" school district. Without aggressive policy interventions, this online learning gap could widen existing educational disparities by race, Ember Smith and Richard Reeves write.

New ways to learn during the pandemic. The pandemic is shedding light on some powerful new educational tools and ways to improve student learning. Rebecca Winthrop joins the Trend Lines podcast from World Politics Review for a conversation about the changing face of education in the era of COVID-19.

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