A colleague encouraged me to share the new slides about Covid from my Global Policy Analysis class here on Twitter, since last year's version seemed to be useful for some.
If anyone would like a copy to use or adapt them for your class, just send me an email!
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We started the class with some overall trends and figures on confirmed cases, testing and confirmed deaths across countries and regions.
It's difficult to compare Corona measures across space, but the Oxford Coronavirus Government Response tracker has created an index to classify the stringency across a range of measures.
Many are not aware that Switzerland has been less stringent than most peer countries.
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Access to vaccines is very unequal. Across rich countries, this is mostly a result of differing policies choices in advance purchases and procuring.
Across the globe, though, we see a huge disadvantage for poorer countries. Many have yet to receive any vaccines.
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In Israel, one of the very early movers on vaccines, we've already seen the beneficial impacts for a couple of months now:
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Next we looked at some of the early evidence on the impacts of Covid-19 on global poverty and inequality, based on the Eggers et al. Science Advances 2021 paper: advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/6/ea…
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The @IMFNews finds that global economic contraction in 2020 was enormous, but thanks to unprecedented policy responses, it is likely to leave smaller impacts than the 2008 financial crisis.
Absent these interventions, global growth contraction could have been 3 times worse.
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Link to the IMF's World Economic Outlook that contains these findings:
Next, we turned to some economic considerations regarding pandemic measures. Many studies have found that containing the virus is key for business & that when measures are to lax, the economy suffers.
Ideally prioritize measures with big health effect & small economic impact 9/n
The remainder of the class focused on vaccines.
First: vaccines are one humanities most impactful innovations ever. They have saved hundreds of millions of lives.
Second: how come this time around vaccines could be developed so quickly without cutting any safety corners?
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Advance Purchase Commitments are a very efficient market design innovation that creates incentives for pharmaceutical companies to develop vaccines that may not otherwise be profitable, notably for lower-income countries. They can play a key role for Covid vaccines too.
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Side note: as @paulnovosad tweeted, Michael Kremer might deserve two Nobel prizes, the first - which he won - for randomized field studies in development, and a second for Advance Market Commitments for vaccines, which have saved millions of lives.
Next we discussed the important Science paper "Market design to accelerate Covid-19 vaccine supply".
It shows that accelerating global vaccine production now would have *enormous* benefits, and lays out strategies for doing so: science.sciencemag.org/content/371/65…
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Finally, we took some time to discuss how Covid-19 has affected students' lives.
It was very moving how openly students shared their experiences & a great way to connect on a more personal level, now that we've all been reduced to online classes for over a year at @UZH_en.
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It was again very enriching to have students from around the world thanks to remotestudentexchange.org! Students shared from Pakistan, Ecuador, Kenya & Zurich. A wonderful way to learn & connect.
Big thanks to the great student and the excellent TAs @Kobbina & Simona Sartor!
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Ps. I realize of course that this is very incomplete. Covid could fill an entire course. I'm sure I fell short in many ways
For this reason, I was a bit nervous to teach this class. At the same time, this seems an incredible time to experience scientific learning in action
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Progresa was one of the first country-wide social programs to be evaluated with a randomized study.
The conditional cash transfer program in Mexico was found to have large benefits on education, health and income. As a result many other governments implemented similar policies.
This follow-up study 20 years later shows that children who benefited from Progresa in the past now have higher education and income.
This is just one of a growing number of rigorous studies showing that when poor families receive assistance, their children do better as adults.
In the past, many economists used to worry that when poor families receive government assistance, their children would grow up being dependent on such assistance.
Thanks to better long-term data & empirical methods, we learned that on the contrary the children tend to...
We've been working on this for a very long time. Iterating between quantitative analysis (with micro-level administrative tax data) and qualitative interviews with affected tax professionals in the country was a particularly interesting learning process for me.
We analyze a very comprehensive reform, which implemented the OECD standards for taxation of multinational firms in Chile. The rich tax data allow us to analyze impacts on all potential channels of international profit shifting:
- services
- interests
- royalties
- goods
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Happening now: inaugural lecture by Sandro Ambühl of @econ_uzh on behavioral public policy with applications to finance.
Many public policies have aspects of behavioral economics. Yesterday's vote in Switzerland on about "opt out" vs "opt in" for organ donations is one example.
Key question: How to set policy that produces outcomes that are good for society and for individuals?
Taking into account that humans are not perfect decision making machines.
Wurde von mehreren Seiten gefragt, was meine Meinung zum Mediengesetz sei. Daher hier nun ein Thread darüber, warum ich klar dafür bin.
Der Grund, warum es ein solches Gesetz überhaupt braucht, ist dass weltweit die Einkommen der Presse massiv geschrumpft sind.
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Dies liegt nicht an den JournalistInnen, sondern am veränderten Umfeld: die Kleinanzeigen sind ins Internet abgewandert, und ein grosser Teil der Werbeeinnahmen geht an Google und Co. Der Werbeumsatz der Schweizer Verlage sank seit 2007 um 75%(!).
My two cents FWIW: Having a field called "development economics" makes no sense. It is essentially all fields of economics related to the 84% of people in the world who don't live in high-income countries. It is good to see it gradually absorbed into the other fields of econ.
To be clear, not criticizing journals, conferences, classes, etc. that use this term. Heck, I run one of these conferences. I just think the distinction actually makes no sense & hope it will gradually disappear. We already see devo papers much more integrated in general fields.
It used to make sense to think of two global groups of income in the 1970s. Not today (as Hans Rosling tirelessly pointed out):
In Zürich laufen dieses Wochenenende viele Veranstaltungen. Nur das albanische Festival wurde verboten. Weil die Impfquote dieser "Community" tief sei.
Das ist bestürzend & zeigt einmal mehr, was passieren kann, wenn die Gewählten so unrepräsentativ für die Bevölkerung sind.
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Ähnliche Verbote von SVP Veranstaltungen (der Partei mit der tiefsten Impfquote) oder Jodlerfestivals, weil in dieser "Community" zu wenig geimpft seien, kann man sich schlecht vorstellen. Bei Minderheiten mit wenig Macht scheinen strengere Massnahmen politisch opportuner.
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Während oft insistiert wird, man dürfe Geimpfte & Ungeimpfte nicht anders behandeln (3G ist umstritten, 2G ausgeschlossen), scheint es akzeptabel, ganze ethnische Gruppen anders zu behandeln, inkl. den Geimpften. Obwohl man Impfung wählen kann, seine Wurzeln jedoch nicht.
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