Habits and demand changes after COVID-19

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate how a transitory lockdown of a sector of the economy may have changed our habits and, therefore, altered the goods’ demand permanently. In a two-sector infinite horizon economy, we show that the demand of the goods produced by the sector closed during the lockdown could shrink or expand with respect to their pre-pandemic level depending on the lockdown’s duration and the habits’ strength. We also show that the end of a lockdown may be characterized by a price surge due to a combination of strong demand of both goods and rigidities in production.