Essays on supply-side fiscal policies for Covid-19

This dissertation is an essay on supply-side fiscal policies against the Covid-19 pandemic. We investigate the effects of the pandemic on the economy and we discuss the role of different fiscal policies, whose focus is both the containment of the economic recession and of the spread of the disease. This thesis is divided in two chapters; they share a novel characterization of the Covid-19 shock, whose endogenous persistence depends on the share of contact-intensive activities in the economy. An- other common element is the possibility for firms to reallocate part of the production towards an online retail technology, which, in contrast with the contact-intensive one, does not contribute to the persistence of the pandemic. Additionally, we are able to expand this core structure with the introduction of firm dynamics, that is a framework where firms can have access to the online retail only if they pay an entry cost and they are still profitable enough to compete in the market. Overall, this structure allows us to focus on the gains deriving from a larger exploitation of the online commerce and to derive policy implica- tions about the effectiveness of various supply-side fiscal tools. Our methodology takes into account both the peculiarities of the DSGE pandemic literature (mainly, in terms of policy analysis) and those of the macro-epidemiological one, especially the individuation of a trade off between health and economic policies and in terms of individual incen- tives.