Author and former health insurance executive Wendell Potter explains to ProMarket why the employer-based health care system in the US is “collapsing” and why health insurance companies see the Covid-19 crisis as a “net saving.”
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The Danger of No Antitrust Enforcement: How a Merger Led to the US Ventilator Shortage
In order to enhance its market power, a large medical device manufacturer and distributor named Covidien bought up the small and competitive Newport Medical in 2012, canceled its federal contract to manufacture 40,000 ventilators, and shut down its ventilator business. That acquisition was part of longstanding consolidation in the medical industry that left the United States unprepared to face the pandemic.
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Managing Expectations Is Critical to Ensure Compliance with Stay-at-Home Measures
A study of a representative sample of Italians finds that 50 percent of respondents reported having adopted all recommended actions, including staying at home, not meeting people, and going to the grocery store as infrequently as possible. People’s intentions to comply depend on whether the length of the extension matches their expectations (or not)
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How Human and Institutional Behavior Change in the Context of Pandemics: a Webinar
Princeton Professor Markus Brunnermeier and Ramanan Laxminarayan, director of the Center for Disease Dynamics, discuss the economics of pandemics. From the bubonic plague to the AIDS outbreak in San Francisco: people’s risk-taking behavior changes when they face an out-of-scale risk. To prevent major damages, detection technologies are less important than people’s incentives to report contagion.
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Why Amazon Is Poised to Emerge from the Covid-19 Crisis Stronger Than Ever
So far, Amazon has reacted to the coronavirus outbreak with restrictions designed to cement its market power at the expense of merchants and consumers.
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Is Monetary Policy Independence Out of Date? A Mini-Course With Paul Tucker (Part 3)
The Federal Reserve and the ECB have been taking unprecedented steps to react to the financial impact of Covid-19. To frame the debate around the limits and legitimacy of central bankers’ extraordinary decisions, watch the third and final part of the Stigler Center mini-course by Sir Paul Tucker, who was deputy governor at the Bank of England during the 2008 global financial crisis.
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Constitutional Limits to Independent Agencies and Central Banks: A Mini-Course With Paul Tucker (Part 2)
The Federal Reserve and the ECB have been taking unprecedented steps to react to the financial impact of Covid-19. To frame the debate around the limits and legitimacy of central bankers’ extraordinary decisions, watch the second part of the Stigler Center mini-course by Sir Paul Tucker, who was deputy governor at the Bank of England during the 2008 global financial crisis.
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An Alternative to Complete Shutdown: Let Younger People Work
The mortality rate of Covid-19 is rising with age. The cost of the economic shutdown declines with the number of people not subject to the shutdown. Consequently, there is a unique optimal cutoff age under which people should be free to carry out normal economic activity (if they want).
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Should Central Banks Have Constraints During a Crisis? A Mini-Course With Paul Tucker (Part 1)
The Federal Reserve and the ECB have been taking unprecedented steps to react to the financial impact of Covid-19. To frame the debate around the limits and legitimacy of central bankers’ extraordinary decisions, watch this Stigler Center mini-course with Sir Paul Tucker, who was deputy governor at the Bank of England during the 2008 global financial crisis.
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Option-Based Credit Spreads Signal a Recession, but the US Stimulus Will Soften the Blow
Over the past month, option-based credit spreads spiked and remain at elevated levels. The surge signals that a recession is at our door, but its dampening over the past week suggests that the unprecedented stimulus may mitigate the blow. In the last week, the likelihood of a recession in the next 12 months has come down from 100 percent to 73 percent.
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How the Covid-19 Pandemic Will Affect Four Types of Labor
A tremendous shock like that of the coronavirus totally unbalances new demand for four different types of labor. The category policymakers should be focused on is workers producing physical goods, preserving as much as possible of their income while encouraging them not to work.
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The Stimulus Package Is Too Expensive and Poorly Targeted: The Waste Contained in the CARES Act
A cost-effective stimulus to mend the effects of a 24 percent drop in GDP would cost no more than $1.3 trillion over a 6-month period. The bill that Congress just approved is much bigger because it allocates resources to people who are not necessarily affected and rescuing businesses, like Boeing, that are in trouble for pre-existing reasons.
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