Thanks to a recommendation from Seth Godin, Economics in Two Lessons is suddenly a best seller in microeconomics on Amazon. Won’t last long, I expect, but nice while it does.
Category: Uncategorized
Lots of people like working from home
For a long time, I’ve used Twitter to publish links to posts on this blog. But a lot of what I write now is on Twitter first. So, I’ve started using a tool called Spooler to turn Twitter threads into blog posts. Here’s the first one
According to Gallup 62 per cent of currently employed US workers have worked from home during the crisis, and 59 per cent of those would prefer to continue doing so “as much as possible”
Important qualifications:
* not the whole workforce, since so many who do in-person jobs are now unemployed
* binary choice – alternative is “Return to working at your office as much as you previously did”
Still suggests that something like 30 per cent of workforce want to work from home, and can do so reasonably effectively. Will be hard for employers to drag them all back to the office, especially with continued need for social distancing.
When elephants fight …
Our policy on fights between the US and China, until now, has been to avoid them, regardless of the merits. On the coronavirus, both are badly at fault, arguably the US more so. And there’s no obvious reason why Australia has any special interest in working out who is to blame.
Open thread on the lockdown
Most of us are six weeks or so into some kind of lockdown by now, so it would be interesting to read some comments on our experiences. From the discussions I’ve had (almost entirely online rather than in person) my perception is that people with office jobs and no kids at home are finding it much easier than might have been expected, but that those with kids at home are finding it every bit as hard as you would think. So far, the impact on those who have lost jobs (or work like conference organization) has been cushioned by income support, in Australia at any rate. Less online discussion with those still working, of course.
Experiences and thoughts?
Fundraiser for MS
I haven’t done a fundraiser for a while, but this seems like a good time. Like everything, the Brissie to the Bay cycle fundraiser for Multiple Sclerosis isn’t going ahead as usual. It’s been replaced with a challenge where participants record their own efforts and set targets for distance and fundraising. I aim to cycle at least 400km in June (my average is around 200), and raise $1000 or more in the process.
Feel free to suggest challenges of your own, with a donation to back them. For example, if anyone is willing to stump up $100, I’ll cycle around Mt Coot-Tha in Brisbane (only 10km, but very tough).
You can donate here and also sign up yourself if interested.
Are the IMF’s forecasts too pessimistic?
That’s the headline for my recent piece in Inside Story, responding to statements from the IMF that “the world is about to experience the worst recession since the Great Depression”. My complaint isn’t so much about the numerical estimates made by the IMF (which are actually optimistic) but about the framing in terms of the Great Depression. It’s almost certain that we will see a larger decline in global income and output in 2020 than we did in the GFC year of 2008. However, if things are managed well, we should see a substantial recovery in 2021, unlike the years of austerity that followed the GFC in many countries. The comparison is also distorted by the fact that growth rates in China and India have been slowing for some time for reasons independent of the pandemic.
Pedestrians and pandemics
A couple of days ago, Adam Creighton had a piece in the Oz, downplaying the risks of the coronavirus pandemic, under the headline “Under 60, in good health? Crossing the road is more risky” Authors don’t choose headlines, but in this case, it’s an exact quote from the article.
There was no supporting analysis, so I decided to do the numbers myself. I looked at Sweden (quoted as a success by Creighton) which seems reasonably comparable to Australia, except that they haven’t gone for a lockdown. I started with some rough estimates on Twitter, and corrected them in response to comments. What follows is the final version.
In 2019, Australia had 172 pedestrian deaths a figure that has been stable for some years. As with the virus, over-60s are more at risk, accounting for 40 per cent of fatalities, compared to 15 per cent of the population. So, just over 100 pedestrians under 60 died last year in Australia. That’s about 2 per week.
Looking at Sweden, there have been 86 virus-related deaths of people under 60 so far, virtually all of them in the last three weeks. That’s about 28 per week, or 14 times the Australian rate
Now we need to adjust for the population difference. Sweden has about 10 million people and Australia about 25 million (ideally, we’d look at the under 60 population, but I’ll leave that adjustment for later). So, as of now, the virus risk to Swedes under 60 is approximately 35 times as great as the risk to Australian pedestrians under 60.
We don’t know how things will change in Sweden. Their strategy is one of “flattening the curve” while allowing the virus to spread slowly. Unless (as some have claimed) there are a huge number of undetected case, it will take a long time to reach herd immunity. Perhaps the current restrictions are sufficient to keep R below 1, but that seems unlikely to me. Even if it turns out that way, thousands more will die before the infection fizzles out.
Read More »Unlocking Australia
Unlocking Australia: What can benefit-cost analysis tell us? Now in The Conversation. Earlier version published here.
Another Zoom presentation
After the Pandemic: a Zoom seminar presentation to UQ students and alumni
Video presentation on the pandemic
My first video presentation on the pandemic. Economic impacts of COVID-19 Episode 1: the impact of physical distancing on jobs and the economy https://vimeo.com/407449146
John Quiggin 