Any health economists there know the best discussion of the optimality or otherwise of the NICE valuations for a life year?
As an outsider, I'd view these as uninformative for decisions about the resources to spend on a new health challenge.
A new condition, one that threatens our ability to treat existing conditions, might raise the point at which marginal benefits and marginal costs are equated.
Besley and Stern [2020] seem to agree with me:
Although, being a mere bean counter myself, in this passage they lose me:
Here, Besley-Stern hint at my proposal for a Centre for Epi and Econ.
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Moments like that tilt me towards the ‘stupid, not lying’ theory.
There are a lot of subtleties in mastering the formal techniques used to study the control of large systems. Optimal control with imperfect lagged data, with sentient agents forming expectations over your actions, with blunt, partially responsive instruments....
1. I don't have a clear view yet a) how permanent a feature the actual disease will be in our lives, and, even if it is basically tamed, b) what the legacy would be anyway.
2. One question is 'what is a rational and just response to the challenge posed by the post covid era, whatever that turns out to be?'. Another is: how do you win elections?
I don't understand worries about the stimulus package causing overheating emanating from the apex of macro.
1. overheating, if it were to happen, is better than underheating in these circumstances.
2. we know what to do to stop overheating and we have the instruments.
Central banks can raise interest rates from their floors. They can sell securities that they bought recently, bloating their balance sheets. Automatic stabilizers will kick in [increased tax revenues; lower spending on benefits].
There are debates to be had about how to maximize the welfare from a given $. But I don't see a serious case for worrying about overheating. Not after 12 years trapped at the zero bound.
The Tory/lockdown sceptic worry for kids' education during the lockdown stirs a voice inside my head 'what exactly were you arguing as the Coalition implemented its austerity plans that impacted on education spending?'
The concern from the same camp about this affecting poor kids most, and exaggerating educational inequality, makes me wonder what they think luxuriantly funded private schools all the time, pandemic or no, are doing. Is that level of educational inequality just about right?
Also not sure about what is being envisaged: allowing R to go >1 temporarily, expecting the vaccination program to subsequently suppress to <1, accepting the burst of deaths and incapacities in the meantime, hoping that the viral spread doesn't collapse schooling in the process?
So far as I can tell, it looks like Mervyn King is on the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee, which will be holding an enquiry into QE. A policy he instigated and guided, 2009-2013. I think he should recuse himself really.
Looking into QE questions loom like 'should central banks have done this at all?'. And 'How does this work and what effects will it have?' Both things he is certainly capable of being impartial about, but he has obvious vested interests in defending what he did and said.
It would be better to call him as a witness and grill him about his involvement in QE, rather than have him asking the questions and exerting influence behind the scenes on any HoL report.
Resistance should be pretty firm, not hysterical. It's based on the view that opening schools up means R goes back to being >1, and we start to lose control of the virus again, even at current levels of vaccinated people.
Vaccinating teachers, who are a small portion of number of people in a school, won't change that calculation enough.
Allowing the virus to get out of control again will generate deaths that are very hard to justify so close to the end; and increase the risk of more mutations that bring forward the date at which round two of the mutation race starts.