Pandemic Economics

PREFACE

Everyone living during the coronavirus pandemic understood its magnitude. The crisis upended people’s lives, leading to difficult health and economic outcomes. We learned about epidemic curves, deliberate recessions, and medical shortages. Overall, the pandemic led to a convergence of a health crisis and an economic crisis, creating challenging personal and collective choices. From an economics perspective, this book investigates the pandemic, arguing that choices involve tradeoffs and incentives matter. As the large number of examples in Pandemic Economics demonstrates, not only are policy measures and economic theories once restricted to economics courses now a part of our everyday discussions, but they make important differences in ...