In the spring of 2020 the world first came to grips with the human and economic costs of COVID‐19. The terrible loss of life was accompanied by the severe curtailment of social and economic activity as governments around the world attempted to contain the spread of the virus. At the time of this writing, the World Health Organization has estimated that some 522 million people have been infected and more than 6 million have died from this virus (https://covid19.who.int/). Currently the number of infections is rapidly declining, but new variants of the virus have been discovered. The IMF has recently estimated that the global costs of the pandemic are some $12.5 trillion (https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/imf-and-covid19). The impact of the pandemic thus warrants a thorough analysis to which The Journal of Regional Science is contributing.Recognizing the need for thorough analyses of both the medical implications of COVID‐19, as well as the implications and effectiveness of non‐pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), in June of 2020 the Journal of Regional Science put out a call for papers to be included in a special issue of the journal on COVID‐19 and Regional Economies. The response was overwhelming and the decision was quickly made to devote two issues of the journal to this topic. The first of the special issues was published in September 2021, and now we are pleased to present the second of these special issues.The eight papers in this issue, like those in the first, combine theoretical insights, new data sources and cutting‐edge econometric techniques to bring increased comprehension to the tradeoffs and impacts of the disease and NPIs intended to halt the spread of COVID‐19 and soften the economic impact of the disease. A good starting place is Ramirez, Veneri and Lembcke's comprehensive international (though regionally‐based) analysis of COVID‐19 mortality. This follows Rodríguez‐Pose and Burlina (2021) from the first special issue, which centered on European regions. Ramirez et al. expand this to discuss countries in the Americas, Asia and Oceania. The results are largely consistent—a number of factors interact to determine COVID‐19 mortality, but NPIs, urban structure, and—most interestingly—government competency and institutional trust play crucial roles.A somewhat overlooked, but quite important aspect of the pandemic was its effect on global commerce. The worldwide supply chain suffered severe disruptions, the echoes of which are still felt. Pei, De Vries and Zhang examine city‐level export growth rates in the wake of the NPIs carried out by Chinese cities. Lockdowns had a tremendous impact on both, although cities with spatial advantages (such as coastal locations and better infrastructure) suffered less. One important point made by these authors is that export growth recovered quite quickly after lockdowns were lifted.Much research has examined the effect of NPIs on consumer behavior and spending patterns, and this issue contains several unique takes on this subject. Carvalho, Peralta, and dos Santos use debit card transactions and cash withdrawals in Portugal to examine the regional and sectoral heterogeneity of NPIs. There was, of course, a marked decrease in transactions overall, but central Portugal suffered more than other regions, both because of a concentration in service sectors, but also because the NPIs had greater impact on behavior in those regions.In Korea, the policy response to the appearance of the virus included, somewhat uniquely, identification of outbreak locations. Two of the papers in this issue use Korean data to identify the economic impact of COVID‐19. Lee and Lee use these disclosures to discuss consumer mobility and spending as a function of case revelation within tightly defined locations, using phone and payment data. The results, similar to the previous paper, entail substantial heterogeneity across neighborhoods. Surprisingly, the results differ across population and employment density measures. Visits to employment‐dense areas fell substantially, as might be expected, but visits to population‐dense neighborhoods were more resilient.Also using Korean data, Kim and Kim look at the heterogeneity of impact of the pandemic on firm entry and exit, as well as employment, with a focus on firm size. Small firms had much larger exit rates than large firms; both types of firms seemed to reduce employment, which suggests that all types of firms suffered due to the reduction in economic activity, but that larger firms were more resilient to absorb the shocks than small(er) firms.Wang, Williams, Duarte and Zheng examine the demand for restaurant activity throughout the pandemic's course in the United States. Using data similar to Glaeser et al. (2021) in the first special issue, these authors look at the cycle of activity in chain restaurants. The use of chains allows the authors to cleanly identify cross‐location impacts of NPIs and later the vaccination rollout, and they also exploit the chains’ brandings to gauge the effect of “social interaction quality” differences. Interestingly, centrally‐located restaurants and those restaurant with better social interaction environment had a faster recovery which the authors attribute to the ever‐present demand for social interactions.When the pandemic hit there was initially great concern that the real estate sector would suffer greatly, amidst fears of a broad economic downturn. In the early days of the pandemic, the incidence of COVID‐19 cases in New York City intensified those fears. Cohen, Friedt and Lautier document intriguing patterns of home price declines across the metropolitan area, due to both contagion fears and the unemployment increases that occurred early on. Lower priced neighborhoods had greater declines because of the impact of unemployment on neighborhood income, while contagion fears were responsible for declines in more wealthy areas. While the New York City housing market has undoubtedly recovered as this is being written, Cohen et al.'s analysis stands as a reminder that future pandemics may still have adverse effects on housing.In a provocative analysis, Tandel, Singh, Patranabis, Bettencourt, and Malani note the differential transmission rates in more prosperous areas versus slums and across men and women. They find evidence linking these differentials to public toilet usage. Women's toilet use is more congested given that they accompany children, and their more limited hours of use, which could explain The implications for policy for the mitigation of future contagion events in slum areas seem clear.Last, but not least, is Shen and Wilkoff's fascinating analysis of the short‐term rental market. The pricing structure of Airbnb and its cousins provide real time data on the reaction of market participants during the pandemic. Using data from Austin, Texas, the authors look at landlord property descriptions and from this measure the cleanliness of the unit. They find that rentals declined in both quantity and price as the pandemic hit, but that those units that could be perceived as clean had substantially higher rents, thus reducing landlord losses as consumers sought temporary, but healthy, respite from the pandemic. As their title says, cleanliness is indeed next to income.We are pleased to bring you these papers, which through their use of innovative data sources such as cell phone locations, card payments, textual analysis, social media, and the like, bring cutting edge tools to these important issues. Our thanks to the authors for allowing us to publish their work!