COVID-19 has led to large numbers of deaths, harms, and financial costs. Without an effective vaccine, those will continue. The pressure to find a vaccine is high; and that pressure creates a risk that the safeguards in place to assure that vaccines are safe and effective will be ignored. The...

How has government healthcare spending prepared countries for tackling the COVID19 pandemic? Arguably, spending is the primary policy tool of governments in providing effective health. We argue that the effectiveness of spending in reducing COVID deaths is conditional on the existence of...

Substantial weaknesses in the preparation by public health authorities and governments increased the health and economic costs of the Covid-19 pandemic relative to what they would have been if pre-existing recommendations had been followed and a wider set of plans had been put into place....

Much has been revealed recently regarding the relative unpreparedness of Public Health Authorities and their governments in many countries. We show that a lack of preparedness for the Covid-19 pandemic resulted from four major types of shortcomings. First, even when there were problems noted in...

In this paper, we discuss 10 parallels between the lack of preparation of financial system regulators prior to the GFC and the lack of preparation by public health authorities and governments prior to Covid-19. These parallels relate to: required stocks (of capital or equipment), data collection...

We discuss and review literature on the macroeconomic effects of epidemics and pandemics since the late 20th century. First, we cover the role of health in driving economic growth and well-being and discuss standard frameworks for assessing the economic burden of infectious diseases. Second, we...

This study quantifies the economic impacts of SARS on the four affected Asian economies and the two most affected Chinese regions using synthetic control methods with macroeconomic and remote-sensing nightlight data. For the four affected economies (China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore), we...