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Economic Policy Incentives to Preserve Lives and Livelihoods
From the Abstract: "The Covid-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] pandemic has motivated a myriad of studies and proposals on how economic policy should respond to this colossal shock. But in this debate it is seldom recognized that the health shock is not entirely exogenous. Its magnitude and dynamics themselves depend on economic policies, and the explicit or implicit incentives those policies provide. To illuminate the feedback loops between medical and economic factors we develop a minimal economic model of pandemics. In the model, as in reality, individual decisions to comply (or not) with virus-related public health directives depend on economic variables and incentives, which themselves respond to current economic policy and expectations of future policies. The analysis yields several practical lessons: because policies affect the speed of virus transmission via incentives, public health measures and economic policies can complement each other, reducing the cost of attaining desired social goals; expectations of expansionary macroeconomic policies during the recovery phase can help reduce the speed of infection, and hence the size of the health shock; the credibility of announced policies is key to rule out both self-fulfilling pessimistic expectations and time inconsistency problems."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Chang, Roberto; Velasco, Andrés
2020-04
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Macroeconomics of a Pandemic: A Minimalist Model
From the Abstract: "We build a minimalist model of the macroeconomics of a pandemic, with two essential components. The first is productivity-related: if the virus forces firms to shed labor beyond a certain threshold, productivity suffers. The second component is a credit market imperfection: because lenders cannot be sure a borrower will repay, they only lend against collateral. Expected productivity determines collateral value; in turn, collateral value can limit borrowing and productivity. As a result, adverse shocks have large magnification effects, in an unemployment and asset price deflation doom loop. There may be multiple equilibria, so that pessimistic expectations can push the economy to a bad equilibrium with limited borrowing and low employment and productivity. The model helps identify policies to fight the effects of the pandemic. Traditional expansionary fiscal policy has no beneficial effects, while cutting interest rates has a limited effect if the initial real interest rate is low. By contrast, several unconventional policies, including wage subsidies, helicopter drops of liquid assets, equity injections, and loan guarantees, can keep the economy in a full-employment, high-productivity equilibrium. Such policies can be fiscally expensive, so their implementation is feasible only with ample fiscal space or emergency financing from abroad."
National Bureau of Economic Research
Céspedes, Luis Felipe; Chang, Roberto; Velasco, Andrés
2020-05
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