Is the current COVID-19 pandemic increasing or decreasing economic inequality? Are more equal societies more resilient to large health shocks? How steep is the social gradient of the COVID-19 impact? What is the distributional impact of the social distancing measures? What will be the long run impact on markets, policies, and institutions? Are existing social insurance mechanisms responding efficiently? How to evaluate the joint effect of the pandemic on the health and income distribution?

The Journal of Economic Inequality solicits submissions for a special issue on “Pandemics and economic inequality” to publish research that addresses these and related questions.

While COVID-19 can be connected to many forms of social inequalities, the scope of the journal is on “economic inequalities”. We will be considering papers researching how the pandemic impacts and will impact the distribution of income and wealth in the short-, medium- and long-run, within or across countries, papers on equality of opportunity (e.g. with respect to education), as well as papers examining the potential role of economic inequalities in fostering the spread of the disease across the world. We are primarily interested in the micro- level perspective, but also welcome macro-level papers to the extent that they draw distributional implications. Papers may, of course, draw directly on analysis of COVID-19, but we are also interested in papers examining the distributive impact of past epidemics, in the short or the long run.

The mission of the Journal of Economic Inequality is to publish quality academic research. This will of course be no exception. Papers will be selected on the basis of scientific merit and will undergo regular peer review. However, to ensure a timely publication of the special issue, the Editorial Board will rigorously screen submissions and reviewers will be encouraged to make clear Accept/Reject recommendations and limit requests for revisions. We therefore urge authors to pay particular attention to details and submit potential “publication-ready” papers.