I use a simple SIR model, augmented to include deaths, to elucidate how pandemic progression is affected by the control of contagion, and examine the key trade-offs that underlie policy design. I illustrate how the cost of reducing the "reproduction number" R0 depends on how it changes the...

This paper studies optimal lockdown policies in a dynamic economy without government commitment. A lockdown imposes a cap on labor supply, which lowers economic output but improves health prospects. A government would like to commit to limit the extent of future lockdowns in order to increase...

This paper analyzes a sequential approach to lifting interventions in the COVID-19 pandemic taking heterogeneity in the population into account. The population is heterogeneous in terms of the consequences of infection (need for hospitalization and critical care, and mortality) and in terms of...

I analyze efficient government interventions to mitigate financial distress during a severe macroeconomic downturn. At the macroeconomic level, the key variable is the gap between the real wage and the shadow cost of labor. This gap is large when unemployment is high. At the micro level,...

When experience goods compete, consuming one product can be informative about value for similar untried products. We study a two-period model of duopoly competition in markets that have this feature and where firms can price discriminate between consumers based on purchasing history. Price...

We test how donors respond to new information about a charity's effectiveness. Freedom from Hunger implemented a test of its direct marketing solicitations, varying letters by whether they include a discussion of their program's impact as measured by scientific research. The base script, used...

Fiscal policy in the U.S. and other countries renders intertemporal budgets non-differentiable, nonconvex, and discontinuous. Consequently, assessing work and saving responses to policy requires global optimization. This paper develops the Global Life-Cycle Optimizer (GLO), a stochastic...

A common objection to "sin taxes"--corrective taxes on goods that are thought to be overconsumed, such as cigarettes, alcohol, and sugary drinks--is that they often fall disproportionately on low-income consumers. This paper studies the interaction between corrective and redistributive motives...