UC Berkeley economics professors Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman have published an article in The New York Times exploring what policymakers can do to protect jobs during the pandemic. They argue that the U.S. can prevent rampant unemployment and ease the way for economic recovery by applying solutions that help during national crises.
Clausen Center Director Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas’s article, “Flatten the Curve of Infection and the Curve of Recession at the Same Time,” has been published in Foreign Affairs. Gourinchas argues that flattening the infection curve inevitably steepens the macroeconomic recession one. But despite this, there are economic policy initiatives that can help contain and shorten the looming recession. If policymakers take bold and correctly timed action, they can flatten both curves to minimize harm.
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Clausen Center faculty director Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas was interviewed for NPR’s March 16, 2020, edition of The Indicator from Planet Money podcast. During the interview, he spoke about the importance of personal and business networks in the economy, how government needs to step in to ensure they are preserved, and the irreversible damage that could be done if they are not.
> Listen to the podcast
Clausen Center faculty director Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas has written a paper exploring how public health efforts to flatten the outbreak curve for the COVID-19 coronavirus inevitably steepens the macroeconomic recession curve. The pandemic has the potential to wreak economic havoc, but macroeconomic support can lessen the damage.
> Read the full paper