Coronavirus policy responses with Dr Nicholas Gruen of Lateral Economics

Would strong early action on coronavirus have been better, from both public health and economic perspectives, than the incremental policy responses we have seen in countries such as Australia and the US? In this episode, Economics Explained host Gene Tunny discusses policy responses to coronavirus with Dr Nicholas Gruen, CEO of Lateral Economics. Nicholas is a Visiting Professor at King’s College, London, and former Chair of several government, non-profit, and private sector organisations, including Innovation Australia and Kaggle.

Timestamps

Use these (approximate) timestamps to jump right to the highlights:

• 4:00 – Nicholas discusses his recent article on coronavirus policy PANIC IS OUR FRIEND! which argues in favour of strong, early action on coronavirus, rather than the incremental ramping up of restrictions we have seen
• 7:50 – Nicholas notes these decisions are challenging because panic itself has costs, as argued by Paul Frijters in his article The Corona Dilemma
• 12:30 – discussion of John Quiggin’s Option value post on the benefits of early action 
• 14:05 – Nicholas suggests policy makers should follow Google’s example and experiment and AB test policy responses, generating feedback to improve policies 
• 15:05 – discussion of what Ben Shapiro calls The Un-askable Question
• 26:35 – Nicholas observes “when things change they become highly unpredictable” in our discussion of what coronavirus could mean for our future economic system
• 36:00 – conclusion of discussion with a quote from Nicholas’s article: “Right now, panic is the friend of anyone who doesn’t want to get this disease, which continues to surprise on the downside (i.e. the bad side).”