European Economic Experts Panel

 

 

This week's European Economic Experts Panel statements:

A) Removing intellectual property protections on Covid-19 vaccines would substantially improve availability of the vaccines in developing countries.

B) Removing intellectual property protections on Covid-19 vaccines would have a negative impact on vaccine development efforts for future variants of SARS-CoV-2 or for the next pandemic.

C) Without an international agreement that facilitates vaccine trade, countries’ incentives to limit exports of vaccines and/or key production inputs are likely to prolong the adverse effects of the pandemic in advanced countries. 

This week's European Economic Experts Panel statements:

A) Allowing short selling of financial securities, such as stocks and government bonds, leads to prices that, on average, are closer to their fundamental values.


B) Requiring investors to disclose short positions in a stock at the equivalent threshold as they are required to do for long positions would result in significantly less short selling.


C) Regulatory restrictions on short selling - such as no naked shorts, temporary bans in times of crisis - make it difficult for optimists and pessimists to have equal influence on asset prices. 

This week's European Economic Experts Panel statements:

A) Offering substantially higher prices per dose would have resulted in larger capacity investments by vaccine makers and accelerated distribution in Europe significantly.

B) In the current situation, paying for more production capacity would be better than offering higher prices for vaccines.

C) If the EU started paying prices above 100 euros per dose, it would on net reduce the cost of the pandemic to the EU via more lives saved and shorter lockdowns. 

This week's European Economic Experts Panel statements:

A) Policies that aim to reduce obesity by increasing incentives for physical activity would be more welfare-improving than policies that increase the financial costs of consuming calories.

B) A ban on advertising junk foods (those that are high in sugar, salt and fat) would be an effective policy to reduce child obesity.

C) Setting targets for schools to reduce obesity (e.g. by diverting financial resources to improve school meals or add cookery to the curriculum) would reduce social welfare because schools in deprived areas, where obesity is higher, are already struggling to deliver the core curriculum. 

This week's European Economic Experts Panel statements:

A) A federal minimum wage of $15 per hour would lower employment for low-wage workers in many states.

B) A federal minimum wage that is pegged to state and/or local conditions such as the cost of living would be preferable to the current arrangements that give states a role in setting the policy.  

The UK’s exit from the European Union (EU) was finally completed on 1 January 2021, nearly five years after the Brexit referendum of 2016. We invited both our European and US panels to express their views on the likely long-term effects on both the UK economy and the aggregate economy of the remaining 27 EU members. We asked the experts whether they agreed or disagreed with the following statements, and, if so, how strongly and with what degree of confidence:

 

The US Federal Trade Commission and 46 states have brought antitrust cases against Facebook, which could potentially require the company to unwind its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. We invited both our US and European panels to express their views on this issue by asking the experts whether they agree or disagree with the following statement, and, if so, how strongly and with what degree of confidence:

 

Edward Lazear passed away in November 2020 at the age of 72, mourned by many in the worlds of economic research and policy-making. Described by two close colleagues and co-authors at Stanford as ‘the first personnel economist’, he was also a founding member of IGM’s US panel and an important contributor to launching our project of polling economics experts on vital policy issues.