public health

August 6, 2020

Chinese Puzzle

Covid–19 is provoking a major reorientation of the foreign policy of the US and Europe. At the heart of this is their changing relationship with China. Before the Coronavirus there were concerns over the actions of the Chinese government, but the pandemic has given rise to fears of a new Cold War.
June 25, 2020

Coronavirus and the Economic Value of Human Life

The Covid-19 crisis has provided many grim examples of some familiar problems in health economics and cost-benefit analysis, and of the ‘tragic choices’ that sometimes need to be made.
May 14, 2020

Model Behaviour: How Economists Can Shape the Post-lockdown Word

The seminal work on epidemiological models was carried out in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The models have developed substantially since then, but their key drivers are still essentially those discovered nearly a century ago.
May 11, 2020

The Problem is Not Testing Capacity but Testing Participation

This paper argues that testing participation – and not testing capacity – is the biggest obstacle to a successful “test and isolate” strategy, as recently proposed by Paul Romer.
April 29, 2020

Going Viral: the History and Economics of Pandemics

Pandemics are a recurring feature of human history. In the modern world, since the 1770s, we have had a series of pandemics, with a series of cholera ones in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and a series of five influenza ones since 1890.
April 17, 2020

Responses to Covid-19 of Governments in Selected Countries

The COVID-19 pandemic is a serious challenge for societies around the world. In response to it not only individuals are changing their behaviour, but also governments are taking various policy actions.
February 1, 2020

To Ban or Not to Ban

A ban on opening a new supermarket is evidence that people want a new supermarket, for if they did not there would be no need for a ban. The same is true of chlorinated chicken, gambling machines and many other products and activities that we are told need to be banned or restricted.