Here's an online presentation I gave today (15th January) to A-level students of economics and politics, and their teachers. On Covid, topics include: why might state intervention be needed? should we put a price on a human life? why has UK GDP been hit relatively hard? what will be the long-term economic impacts? how much … Continue reading The Economics of Covid and Brexit
Category: health economics
‘Lockdown 3’ won’t be anywhere near as bad as the original
New year, new lockdown. I’m instinctively sceptical that such severe restrictions on our lives can ever be justified, but two factors have surely tipped the balance in their favour. The first, of course, is the far more rapid transmission of the new Covid variant. This has increased the benefits of locking down, as the risk … Continue reading ‘Lockdown 3’ won’t be anywhere near as bad as the original
The Economics of Covid
Here’s a presentation I gave on 4th November (to teachers of A-level economics) on the economics of Covid and the appropriate fiscal and monetary responses to a pandemic... economics-of-covid-4-november-2020Download
Lockdowns fail the cost-benefit test
The Spectator has published a SAGE paper outlining a ‘reasonable worst case’ scenario leading to an additional 85,000 Covid deaths in the UK, even with some partial mitigation. It’s hard to know what to make of this figure without a better understanding of what would happen if the government did nothing. (The paper assumed that … Continue reading Lockdowns fail the cost-benefit test
