Clark Center Forum

 

This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel statements on The Prices of Medical Supplies. 

This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel statements:

A) Clearing the market for surgical face masks using prices is detrimental to the public good.

B) Laws to prevent high prices for essential goods in short supply in a crisis would raise social welfare.

C) Governments should buy essential medical supplies at what would have been the market price and redistribute according to need rather than ability to pay.

  

Alberto Alesina, a founding member of the IGM economic experts panel, passed away over the weekend—a sad loss for the whole research community. Alberto was a fantastic economist, a wonderful person and a friend to many of the panelists. The IGM directors are collecting a few remembrances that we will be posting from today. 

The IGM is administering this new survey on the outlook for the economy in collaboration with fivethirtyeight.com. The FiveThirtyEight/IGM COVID-19 Economic Outlook survey complements the existing IGM expert panels and is being overseen by Professors Allan Timmermann and Jonathan Wright. The list of experts answering the questions is identified in the post along with the […] 

Raghuram Rajan Although the COVID-19 pandemic has shown why high-level coordination is sometimes necessary for managing emergencies, it has also underscored the risks of placing too much power in the hands of an incompetent central authority. The best approach is a middle path, with a slight bias in favor of decentralization. Read more> 

Agnès Bénassy-Quéré and Beatrice Weder di Mauro After a period of hesitation, governments in Europe have reacted forcefully to the Covid-19 pandemic with various strategies combining social distancing, testing/quarantining, and lockdowns. During a pandemic, however, coordination is key, and in responding to the current crisis European coordination has proved as painful as ever. A new […] 

Marianne Bertrand et al The COVID-19 pandemic is imposing uneven economic and health burdens on different communities in Illinois. Until a vaccine or effective therapy is available, intensive testing and monitoring of the disease will be necessary to prevent community spread and facilitate economic reopening. Unfortunately, existing inequities are likely to inhibit these efforts by […] 

This week’s IGM European Economic Experts Panel statements on the Prices of Medical Supplies 

This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel statements on Stimulus and Stabilizers