A user-guide to Covid-19

This is a summary of some of the activities I have been involved during this difficult period.

• DELVE report “THE ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF THE COVID 19 CRISIS in UK!” has been published. The report has been written by a number of different economists, including myself and my co-author Paolo Surico. Some press coverage follows: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live:bbc_radio_fourfm; https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53772260; https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/aug/13/lifting-coronavirus-restrictions-too-early-would-be-a-disaster; https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/get-creative-to-save-jobs-urge-experts-xq5zpjxmq.

• Rotation as Contagion Mitigation. This paper has been published in Management Science. A non technical discussion can be found here: LBS report and  Kellogg Insight. The paper studies how to organize a workforce to minimize the likelihood and size of new covid-19 outbreaks. The insights of this paper are discussed in the DELVE report “The Economic Aspects of the Covid 19 crisis”.

• Optimal Test Allocation with J. Ely and J. Steiner is forthcoming to Journal of Economic Theory. This is a recent article in Economics Observatory. This is a recent article in Time. This is an article in Voxeu. This is a video part of our series A user-guide to Covid-19. This is an Interview CNBC .

Other material on Covid

• Article in La Vanguardia
• ERC at the service of Covid-19
• Interview in Italian, Rai: Click here
• Interview in Italian with Marco Montemagno: Click here
• A user-guide to Covid-19: Voxeu article and resources
• Covid-19-research-conduit
• Covid-19, dati miglior per evitare danni strutturali all’economia. Ecco come. Sole 24 Ore.
• Gli strumenti che servono per combattere il Coronavirus. Corriere della Sera.
• Decoding The Economic and Contagious “Enigma” of Covid-19.
• This is a simple method to get a better sense of Covid-19 deaths. We have the analysis for many countries now and the analysis is updated as more data comes in. The article is Here and the information on methodology and codes is Here. See Interview in TG Rai 1

Project

What follows is a summary of the work that Paolo and I did at the very beginning of Covid-19.

Covid-19 is the largest health and economic crisis of our generation. We are all bombarded by a lot of news, which are evolving quickly, are often highly technical, and have policy consequences that dramatically affect our lives.

Paolo Surico and I felt the need to learn some tools to process this information and to understand and rationalise current health and economic policies. We created a narrative to highlight different trade-offs which are part of: a) every health policy that attempts to flatten the contagion curve of Covid-19, and b) every economic policy that attempts to flatten the ‘recession curve’ caused by Covid-19.

We thought to share the outcome of this exercise with you. We have developed A user guide of Covid-19. It consists of a short introduction and four mini-lectures (each with slides and a video):

• A user guide of Covid-19: introduction. [Video] 

Reporting the facts that are available to us all, in a way that is concise, precise and accessible to a large audience.

• A user guide of Covid-19: part I: gathering facts. [Video, Slides] 

Reporting the facts that are available to us all, in a way that is concise, precise and accessible to a large audience.

• A user guide of Covid-19: part II: epidemiology for dummies. [Video, Slides]

Explaining, in simple but precise terms, the epidemiology models that are guiding governmental health policies. Discussing trade-offs in health policies that implement different degrees of social distancing.

• A user guide of Covid-19: part III: economics for dummies. [Video, Slides]

Explaining, in simple but precise terms, the economic mechanisms behind the new economic crisis due to Covid-19.

• A user guide of Covid-19: part IV: policy options. [Video, Slides]

Discussing health and economic policy options in view of the current situation.

• A user guide for Covid-19: part v: When and how to test [Video, Slides]

Discussion the value of testing in view of formulating exit strategies.

A file containing a comprehensive set of teaching slides is here: Lecture of Covid-19.

Financial support from the European Research Council and the Wheeler Institute is gratefully acknowledged. Luis Fonseca and Sarah Pavlu have provided excellent research assistance.

Lecture on Covid-19