VoxEU & CEPR Coverage of the Covid-19 Global Pandemic

From early March, it became clear that economists around the world, like everyone else, were mesmerised by the Covid-19 pandemic and trying to make sense of the unfolding events. This column describes how the tradition of pre-prints in physics and the medical sciences inspired the creation of CEPR's “Covid Economics: Vetted and Real-Time Papers”. Beyond its contribution to a faster understanding of the pandemic, the Covid Economics experiment may help the economics profession think about how research is published.

The use of a language in written and formal contexts that is distinct from the languages used in everyday communication – such as Latin in early modern Europe and Standard Arabic in the Arabic-speaking world, both past and present – comes with benefits, but also with costs. Drawing on publishing data from early modern Europe, this column shows that the Protestant Reformation led to a sudden and sharp rise in vernacular printing, such that by the end of the 16th century, the majority of works were printed in spoken tongues rather than in Latin. This transformation allowed broader segments of society to access knowledge. It also diversified the composition of authors and book content and had long-term consequences for economic development.