Pandemic-economics blog

Is the Covid pandemic and our collective responses to it best framed as health vs.

What is bad luck? Bad luck is spilling spaghetti sauce down your shirt right before an important mee…

I’m OK with wearing a CovidCard. But are you? There’s no point me doing it alone.

New Zealand’s COVID Tracer app is “on track to achieve nothing”, according to Sam Morgan.

New COVID-19 cases are soaring in the US. I would naturally expect the number of deaths to be soarin…

Much of the public debate about the response to the COVID-19 pandemic has focused on the extent to w…

Zero community transmission. Just a handful of active cases, all in quarantine. New Zealand is in an…

Elimination. Border incursions. An outbreak. A lockdown, which takes us back to elimination.

As the metaphorical ink was drying on the Commission’s technological change and the future of work f…

One of the key findings from the Commission’s recent Technological change and the future of work inq…

In normal times, New Zealand’s labour market works well. Compared to many other countries, unemploym…

It is said that ‘good things happen to those who hustle’.

One of the big goals of some urban policymakers in recent years has been achieving greater populatio…

Last October, New Zealand communities elected their local government councillors and mayors.

Eighty-four percent of New Zealanders were concerned about the chances that they or someone close to…

Governments around the world have restricted the activities of their citizens in the fight against C…

In times of crisis, it is said, speed is of the essence. And the dramatic consequences of the COVID-…

“Shut the borders” is a natural first reaction to an external threat.

New Zealanders have a lot of experience with islands and unwanted organisms – keeping them away, lea…

A peculiar fixation of economists is looking for the unseen or unnoticed effects of an event.

As we (hopefully) exit from the constraints imposed to control the COVID-19 virus, it’s worth thinki…

Over the last few weeks’, you might have felt like the country was making its way along a ridge betw…

Let me introduce you to RPE, a “quick & dirty” estimate of the effective reproduction number of COVI…