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Abstract
This paper documents that a large-scale government subsidy aimed at encouraging people to eat out in restaurants in the wake of the first 2020 COVID-19 wave in the United Kingdom has had a significant causal impact on new cases, accelerating the subsequent second COVID-19 wave. The scheme subsidised 50% off the cost of food and non-alcoholic drinks for an unlimited number of visits in participating restaurants on Mondays–Wednesdays from 3–31 August 2020. Areas with higher take-up saw both a notable increase in new COVID-19 infection clusters within a week of the scheme starting and a deceleration in infections within two weeks of the program ending. Similarly, areas that exhibited notable rainfall during the prime lunch and dinner hours on the days the scheme was active record lower infection incidence—a pattern that is also measurable in mobility data—and non-detectable on days during which the discount was not available or for rainfall outside the core lunch and dinner hours.

The UK's defining domestic economic policy under the Conservative governments since 2010 can be subsumed under the term 'austerity'.

This paper documents a significant association between the exposure of an individual or area to the UK government's austerity-induced welfare reforms begun in 2010, and the following: the subsequent rise in support for the UK Independence Party, an important correlate of Leave support in the 2016 UK referendum on European Union membership; broader individual-level measures of political dissatisfaction; and direct measures of support for Leave. Leveraging data from all UK electoral contests since 2000, along with detailed, individual-level panel data, the findings suggest that the EU referendum could have resulted in a Remain victory had it not been for austerity. (JEL D72, F15, F60, H53, I38)

Did austerity cause Brexit? This paper shows that the rise of popular support for the UK Independence Party (UKIP), as the single most important correlate of the subsequent Leave vote in the 2016 European Union (EU) referendum, along with broader measures of political dissatisfaction, are strongly and causally associated with an individual's or an area's exposure to austerity since 2010. In addition to exploiting data from the population of all electoral contests in the UK since 2000, I leverage detailed individual level panel data allowing me to exploit within-individual variation in exposure to specific welfare reforms as well as broader measures of political preferences. The results suggest that the EU referendum could have resulted in a Remain victory had it not been for a range of austerity-induced welfare reforms. Further, auxiliary results suggest that the welfare reforms activated existing underlying economic grievances that have broader origins than what the current literature on Brexit suggests. Up until 2010, the UK's welfare state evened out growing income differences across the skill divide through transfer payments. This pattern markedly stops from 2010 onwards as austerity started to bite.

A series of cuts since the Coalition government curtailed the welfare state, activating this way a range of existing economic grievances. As a result, in districts that received the average austerity shock UKIP vote shares were up, compared to districts with little exposure to austerity. Thiemo Fetzer writes that the tight link between UKIP vote shares and an area's support for Leave implies that, had austerity not happened, the referendum could have been in favour of Remain.

Using estimates of support for Leave across UK local authority areas constructed from a comprehensive 20,000 strong survey, we show that both the level and the geographic variation capturing differential degrees of support for Leave have changed significantly since the 2016 EU referendum. A lot of area characteristics, many of which were previously associated with higher levels of support for Leave, are now significant correlates capturing a swing towards Remain. They include, for example, the degree to which local authorities receive transfers from the EU or the extent to which their economies rely on trade with the EU, along with past electoral support for UKIP (and the BNP) and exposure to immigration from Eastern Europe. Lastly, exposure to austerity since 2010 is among the strongest individual correlates weakening the support for Leave. The evidence is consistent with the argument that the small margin of victory of Leave in 2016 was, to a significant extent, carried by protest voters, who used the EU referendum to voice their discontent with domestic social and economic developments, particularly, austerity. Lastly, we present some evidence suggesting that the UK public, even in Leave supporting areas, would be much more willing to make compromises on free movement and aspects of single market membership compared to what appears to be the UK governments negotiation objective.

Abstract
We use the recent trade escalation between the USA and its trade partners to study whether retaliatory tariffs are politically targeted. We find comprehensive evidence using individual and aggregate voting data suggesting that retaliation is carefully targeted to hurt Trump. We develop a simulation approach to construct counterfactual retaliation responses allowing us to quantify the extent of political targeting while also studying potential trade-offs. China appears to place great emphasis on achieving maximal political targeting. The EU seems to have been successful in maximising political targeting while at the same time minimising the potential damage to its economy.