Real-World Economics Review

Mortality and prevalence of Corona. Iceland tests a lot and has some of the best, most complete and representative, data on Corona infections (graph above, which is consistent with comparable data for Iceland from surveys, h/t Jesse Frederik) and seems to have come to grips with Corona, for the moment. What do these data tell us about the prevalence and mortality rate of Corona? They show that young people (18-, below another definition will be used) seem to be relatively immune to...

from Norbert Häring In January  2018, a pilot project for the surveillance of air travelers, commissioned by the World Economic Forum, was agreed upon in Davos. At the time, I presented the Known Traveller Digital Identity (KTDI) project as a “totalitarian dystopa”. A follow-up report shows that the multinational corporations are successfully involving governments and the EU in their plans. Covid-19 is speeding up implementation tremdendously and Bill Gates inadvertently lets us know...

from Lars Syll Getting it right about the causal structure of a real system in front of us is often a matter of great importance. It is not appropriate to offer the authority of formalism over serious consideration of what are the best assumptions to make about the structure at hand … Where we don’t know, we don’t know. When we have to proceed with little information we should make the best evaluation we can for the case at hand — and hedge our bets heavily; we should not proceed with...

from David Ruccio We can’t stay this way forever—with physical distancing (now that all 50 states have finally issued some kind of Stay at Home order), schools closed (and operating with a semblance of education through online teaching), businesses shuttered (even while the stock market soars). The question that seems to be on everyone’s lips is, when are things going to go back to normal? But who wants to return to normalcy? The novel coronavirus pandemic has revealed, if nothing else,...

from Lars Syll A low-powered study is only going to be able to see a pretty big effect. But sometimes you know that the effect, if it exists, is small. In other words, a study that accurately measures the effect … is likely to be rejected as statistically insignificant, while any result that passes the p < .05 test is either a false positive or a true positive that massively overstates the … effect. … A conventional boundary, obeyed long enough, can be easily mistaken for an actual...

source

from WEA Young Economists

from David Ruccio    sources [frontline workers, coronavirus cases] As the Guardian explained earlier today, the coronavirus has discriminated in inflicting its terrible toll on the two very different cities that make up New York City. Different boroughs, even different neighborhoods within each borough, are experiencing coronavirus almost as though it were two different contagions. In wealthier white areas the residential streets are empty; parking spots that are fought over in normal...

[embedded content]

from Dean Baker We have a lot of economist type people telling us how awful the economy will be once we get through our near-term shutdown period. At the risk of being accused of unwarranted optimism, I am not sure I buy the pessimists’ story. Before saying anything about the economy, we have to outline where we think our containment efforts are headed. I will throw out my story, which people here who know what they are talking about can correct. Let’s assume that after two months we have...