The costs of lockdown can no longer be justified
In an otherwise depressing week, two pieces of very good news emerged from India. In Mumbai, blood tests conducted by the city authorities on 6,936 randomly selected people found that some 40 per cent had coronavirus antibodies. Just 6,000 deaths have been reported so far in a city of 20 million. A similar exercise in […]
Great expectations: The Darwinian wars of economic and epidemiological forecasting
A key concept in modern economics is, to use the jargon term, rational expectations. The idea has dominated orthodox macroeconomics over the past 30 years. Not all economists have been persuaded of its merits by any means, but nevertheless, its influence has extended far beyond academia, into finance ministries and central banks around the world. […]
The costs of lockdown could far outweigh the benefits
Radical leaders such as Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand and Nicola Sturgeon in Scotland have gained plaudits through their relentless focus on eliminating Covid-19. But this comes at an obvious economic cost. Tourism is some 15 per cent of New Zealand’s GDP, and major destinations such as Queenstown in the Southern Alps have been devastated. […]
The government should have been working on multiple tracing apps all along
The NHS contract tracing app has been scrapped in favour of a system developed by Google and Apple. Although health secretary Matt Hancock has been heavily criticised for this failure, the UK is by no means alone. For example, Denmark, Germany and Italy each tried to build their own app, based on the same type […]
What can we learn from the Black Death? Be prepared, trust entrepreneurs, and have faith
Can we learn from history? An excellent book by Ben Gummer on the Black Death in fourteenth century Britain, The Scourging Angel, shows that we can. Published 10 years ago, the book offers many intriguing parallels with the Covid-19 crisis. Of course, the Black Death was almost incomprehensibly more lethal. Around 50 per cent of […]
Mythbusting coronavirus is vital for life to go back to normal
As the government plans the timetable for getting Britain back to work, opinion polls continue to show strong support for the lockdown. An Opinium poll at the weekend is typical. Unsurprisingly, given the overwhelming scientific evidence on dangers associated with large gatherings, a massive 84 per cent of respondents thought stadiums should not be reopened […]
Coronavirus: Fake news that an elderly lockdown is remainer revenge could spread
The attention of policy makers has been focused on the science of how viruses either spread or are contained in social networks. Just as crucial in the current circumstances is the spread of beliefs and behaviour. Will people continue to observe social distancing once the lockdown is eased, or will they revert to pre-lockdown patterns […]
Coronavirus: Economists have a role to play in recovery
Lockdowns are starting to be eased in Europe. Austria, Denmark, Italy and Spain are all moving back towards normality. At some point during May, the UK will follow. We can reflect on what the government has got right and wrong so far in the opening phase of the pandemic. This is emphatically not to apportion […]
Once we reach a social distancing tipping point, more restrictions won’t help at all
How long should the lockdown last? Should it be tightened or relaxed? An abstract concept from both epidemiology and network theory can give a powerful insight into these highly practical problems. This is the concept known as the “threshold”, sometimes called the critical point or the tipping point. The basic idea is a very familiar […]
To pay for this crisis, the government must keep in mind Ricardian equivalence
John Maynard Keynes could certainly craft a neat phrase. In the Second World War, he wrote in his pamphlet How to Pay for the War: “It is only in a free community that the task of government is complicated by the cause of social justice.” The impact of the coronavirus pandemic is similar to a […]
