MAINE, USA — The economic impacts of COVID-19 on Maine will take months to fully reveal themselves. To get a head start, one group of University of Maine graduate students and their professor have begun working with the State Economist’s Office to develop a forecast for how much COVID-19 will affect Maine’s economy.
Their goal is to create five models that evaluate the possible loss in Maine's revenue through things such as tourism spending, travel-related spending, and cruise ship spending, just to name a few. Their forecasts will also include prospects for recovery and help those who are trying to grapple with these issues, while also guiding policymakers’ decisions as Maine's economy reopens.
Head researcher and Assistant Professor at the University of Maine's School of Economics Andrew Crawley, tells NEWS CENTER Maine this opportunity to tackle such a complicated issue provides hands-on experience for the students and better prepares them to tackle real-world problems.
"Part of exposing the students to this kind of research or this kind of work is the fact that with this level of uncertainty, you'll never see this in a textbook, you never see this usually taught in theory," Crawley said.
The plan is to provide the State Economist’s Office with the report at the end of June. For those interested in what information is provided by the report, it will be published on the University of Maine's School of Economics website when it is published.
At NEWS CENTER Maine, we're focusing our news coverage on the facts and not the fear around the illness. To see our full coverage, visit our coronavirus section, here: /coronavirus