The COVID-19 pandemic has forced governments around the world to take countermeasures with drastic consequences. In order to mitigate the economic effects, governments have initiated unprecedented aid packages. In light of the extremely volatile development of the crisis, policy makers urgently require up-to-date empirical information about the economic situation. We propose the CoRisk-Index, a real-time measure of industry risk assessments associated to COVID-19. The index can help to complement more traditional measures of economic activity, as it nowcasts how business perceive their corona-related risk exposure. Preliminary findings suggest that industries, such as Manufacturing and Retail, report strong exposure to supply and demand shocks early on, while services sectors, such as Finance, only recently started to report about corona-related risks. Moreover, we find that negative sentiment of reports mentioning corona preempts global stock market developments. The CoRisk-Index will be updated constantly, throughout the crisis, and it allows researchers and the general public to get a comprehensive view on how industries assess economic risks related to COVID-19.
