Eric Budish, Anil Kashyap, Ralph S. J. Koijen, and Brent Neiman
It is essential to recognize that beyond offering direct support to people who lost jobs and become ill, there are three related economic policy problems posed by the Covid-19 crisis. One is to design economic policies that complement the public health actions to slow the spread of the disease (flattening the curve), another is to help people and firms mitigate the challenges of operating under social distancing, and the third is to prepare so that the eventual recovery is as rapid as possible. We identify fundamental reasons why the government can help on all three fronts. Importantly, we should start making policy choices now about each of the three. We identify some policies that can support these objectives and others that could be counter-productive.
