VoxTalks Economics

Should competition authorities intervene more often in tech mergers? Be careful, Luis Cabral tells Tim Phillips: they risk stifling innovation if they do. 

In every crisis, economists will tell us that it is time for helicopter money, and Covid-19 is no different. But the helicopters never seem to take off. Donato Maschiandaro tells Tim Phillips why not. Read about helicopter money in Issue 7 of Covid Economics.

Do we close our public spaces to protect our communities from Covid-19, or keep them open, as in Sweden? Dirk Krueger tells Tim Phillips that informing the public and then trusting individuals to make good choices might deliver a decline in infections, while minimising the Covid recession. Download Covid Economics 5, including Dirk's paper. Picture: Creative Commons/Vogler

On the 75 anniversary of the VE Day, David Edgerton tells Tim Phillips that Britain's belief in its go-it-alone scientific and inventive genius is “deluded”, and has stunted the nation's postwar growth. Download The Economics of the Second World War Seventy-Five Years On, featuring David's chapter.

Last month the media accused New York's wealthy residents of jumping the queue for Covid-19 testing. Stephanie Schmitt-Grohé, a New York resident herself, ran the numbers. She tells Tim Phillips what she discovered.

In a new paper called Born out of necessity, a group of economists and  lawyers propose a way for developing and emerging countries to temporarily redirect debt repayments to fund Covid-19 relief. Ugo Panizza and Mitu Gulati tell Tim Phillips how it would work. Read about this controversial idea at VoxEU.

Keynes amassed an extensive collection of fine art during his lifetime. David Chambers tells Tim Phillips what the financial returns on his investment have been, and the insight this gives us into how to value an art portfolio as an asset. 

The 2014 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone affected an area which included a pioneering experiment in community healthcare. Oeindrila Dube tells Tim Phillips about the lifesaving impact of this experiment - and two important lessons we can learn that may help to contain the spread of Covid-19 in Africa.

When Covid-19 wasn't even on the radar of most policymakers, Warwick McKibbin of ANU used his experience from previous pandemics to create seven scenarios for its impact. All implied a major shock to the global economy. Tim Phillips asks him how his model was able to capture the nature of Covid-19, and which policymakers listened to the warning. Read about McKibbin's scenarios in Chapter 3 of Economics in the Time of Covid-19.

In international crises, disasters and wars, private lenders disappear. But governments have stepped in and lent far more to each other than we previously thought. Christoph Trebesch tells Tim Phillips that new data on  200 years of official lending may contain unexpected good news for countries crippled by Covid-19. Read 'Coping with disasters: Lessons from two centuries of international response' at VoxEU