Amedeo Piolatto

1 INTRODUCTION Online platforms that aggregate information and facilitate transactions play an increasingly important role in many markets. A leading example is the tourism industry, where online travel agencies like Booking.com allow consumers to search and directly make reservations for hotel rooms and other properties. The success of these platforms is largely due to the fact that they make it much easier for consumers to find products that match their preferences.

Climate change and natural disaster mitigation are at the top of the global policy agenda.1 In recent years, there have been several calls for a more thorough economic analysis of their causes, consequences, and possible remedies (Fernando 2012, Azmat et al. 2020). Some progress in this direction has been made. The Journal of Economic Geography, for instance, devoted a special issue in 2021 to the “Economic Geography of Climate Change”.

Alex Rees-Jones, John D'Attoma, Amedeo Piolatto, Luca Salvadori 04 November 2020 While few groups have weathered the Covid-19 crisis unscathed, recent evidence suggests that the damage has been especially extreme among the economically vulnerable. This column evaluates changing attitudes towards welfare spending as a result of the pandemic. The findings suggest that people living in areas most severely hit by the crisis are increasingly supportive of long-term reforms to the welfare system.