"Discussing the Spanish Flu, HIV/AIDs, SARS and Ebola against the background of Covid-19, Pandemic Economics demonstrates how scientists consistently warned the world about pandemics, and how, despite this, the possibility of global lockdown caused unprecedented economic policies and ruin. The...

We study contact tracing in a new macro-epidemiological model in which infected agents may not show any symptoms of the disease and the availability of tests to detect asymptomatic spreaders is limited. Contact tracing is a testing strategy that aims to reconstruct the infection chain of newly...

Does social distancing harm innovation? We estimate the effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs)—policies that restrict interactions in an attempt to slow the spread of disease—on local invention. We construct a panel of issued patents and NPIs adopted by 50 large US cities during...