Politicians have trade offs to make when it comes to Covid-19. Lockdown is an effective but costly life-saving 'treatment', but at what point does the cost outweigh the lives saved? Frédéric Jenny (ESSEC Business Scool, OECD) has contributed a paper to CEPR's new Covid Economics Review, which you can download free here https://cepr.org/content/covid-economics-vetted-and-real-time-papers-0
Video Vox
Frédéric Jenny 20 March 2020
Frédéric Jenny (ESSEC Business Scool, OECD) , talks about his recent paper for CEPR's new Covid Economics Review, 'Economic resilience, globalisation and market governance: Facing the Covid-19 test' The full paper is available here https://cepr.org/content/covid-economics-vetted-and-real-time-papers-0
James Bullard 16 May 2020
In the US around 1,600 firms go out of business in a normal day. James Bullard, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, thinks there is little chance of businesses that were about to go under before the pandemic being shored up by the measures being taken to protect the US economy. His view is that whatever economy we had on February 1st, we want that economy on the other side of the pandemic
James Bullard 16 April 2020
James Bullard, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, considers current estimates that work-from-home output might be 90% of normal output to be over optimistic. His suggestion is that we should stop worrying about growth rates for Q2 and just write it off.
James Bullard 16 April 2020
The actions and policies taken to control the spread of COVID-19 in the US have had the effect of engineering a controlled, partial and temporary shutdown of certain sectors of the economy. James Bullard, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, tells Tim Phillips about the implications of theses radical changes to the management of the US economy in the near term.
Debraj Ray 16 April 2020
Governments have a tendency to prefer minimising visible dangers. A tight lockdown reduces visible deaths from Covid-19, but brings with it diffuse, and relatively invisible deaths (for example suicide, domestic violence). Debraj Ray (NYU) is coauthor of CEPR's Policy Insight 102: India's Lockdown
Lore Vandewalle 16 April 2020
In India, the trade-off the government is facing is not lives vs the economy when it comes to fighting Covid-19, but lives vs lives. The aim is not to lose more people to the containment measures than the virus would claim without them. Lore Vandewalle (IHEID) is a coauthor of CEPR Policy Insight 102, India's Lockdown
Debraj Ray, Lore Vandewalle 15 March 2020
On 24 March 2020, the government of India ordered a nationwide lockdown of 1.3 billion people for 21 days as a preventive measure against COVID-19. Given what we know of the epidemic, it is difficult to quarrel with the prescription of social distancing and lockdown, when accompanied by state measures that provide adequate economic protection, but what happens in countries where the state is unable to provide the necessary back-up welfare measures? Debraj Ray (NYU) and Lore Vandewalle (IHEID) discuss the ideas presented in the CEPR Policy Insight they recently authored (together with Sreenivasan Subramanian). Download the paper here
Marti Subrahmanyam 14 April 2020
Marti Subrahmanyam, Stern School of Business at New York University, talks about the role of localbanks in helping European firms weather the Covid-19 crisis.
Taken from the SAFE-CEPR Policy Webinar on Corona & Risk Sharing: A European Equity Fund - April 8th 2020
Laurence Boone 09 April 2020
Laurence Boone, OECD, talks to Tim Phillips about the rapidly increasing economic impact of Covid-19 and in particular of the measures being taken to contain its spread.