I’d still go with this article by Ed Yong, which covers biology, epidemiology, medicine, and politics. Here’s one bit:Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
Will Marble writes:Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social ScienceI’m a Ph.D. student in political science at Stanford. Along with colleagues from the Stanford medical school, law school, and elsewhere, we recently completed a white paper evaluating the evidence for and tradeoffs involved with shelter-in-place policies. To our knowledge, our paper contains the widest review of the relevant covid-19 research. It summarizes research from a number of fields, including epidemiology, economics, and political science.I just have a few comments:
Using government spending power to bail out financiers and rentiers makes a travesty of MMT....Naked Capitalism
My plan was to write a MMT primer in between the publication of Volume I and Volume II of my text on recessions. The manuscript for Recessions: Volume I is still being edited, and I hope to do its final formatting (which will take away from writing time). I am considering pivoting the MMT primer to be a discussion of how MMT fits in with the challenges of the post-pandemic world....To my way of thinking, the post-pandemic economy and its economics will be determined by the degree to which neoliberalism and neoliberal globalization survive. The good news is that the foundation is crumbling and there are alternatives on the table as options to select from.
The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.
— Pagina:Gramsci - Quaderni del carcere, Einaudi, I.djvu/318 § (34). Passato e presente.Quaderni del carcere, « Ondata di materialismo» e « crisi di autorità », volume I, quaderno 3, p. 311, written circa 1930
—English translation Selections from the Prison Notebooks, “Wave of Materialism” and “Crisis of Authority” (NY: International Publishers), (1971), pp. 275-276.Prison Notebooks Volume II, Notebook 3, 1930, (2011 edition) SS-34, Past and Present 32-33, WikiquoteBond Economics
Lessons from Alibaba and JD.com.The difference between Jack Ma and Jeff Bezos.
Now is the time for major corporations to make good on their commitments.Coronavirus Is Putting Corporate Social Responsibility to the Test
How AI, genomics, and automation are powering biotech breakthroughs....
Deep Nishar, Senior Managing Partner for the Americas at Softbank’s Vision Fund, tells Azeem Azhar why biotech is the next trillion-dollar market, and what breakthroughs to expect....
CNBC
- China on Tuesday said the official Purchasing Manager’s Index for March was 52.0, beating expectations for an economy hit by the coronavirus outbreak.
- Analysts polled by Reuters had expected the official PMI to come in at 45 for the month of March, from a record low of 35.7 a month earlier.
The buzz-word at the moment in Australian government and policy circles is ‘hibernation’ – the government is hoping, that the economy can behave like a crocodile and find some ‘river bank’ and have a ‘good sleep’ until the pandemic is over, at which time, it will burst forth into a new growth phase and unless the virus mutates into something worse in the meantime then all will be well. Their policy interventions to date – while they have been like dragging a chain as their conservative instincts are being dragged very quickly into the demands and realities of real world macroeconomics, which is different to the nonsense that is taught by mainstream economists in our now depleted universities – have been crafted to ensure nothing important changes in a structural sense in our socio-economic lives. The problem is that the existing system, which they are hoping to put into hibernation for a while, is putrid to the core and needs major changes if we are to achieve a socio-ecological transformation. Remember the failings of neoliberalism? Remember climate change? Remember the poles melting? Remember the engineered cuts to workers who rely on penalty rates at weekends to maintain a sense of material prosperity? Remember the 13.7 per cent labour underutilisation rate? Remember the failed public transport and energy sectors, privatised and lacking in investment? Remember the financial markets that were exposed by the recent Royal Commission as corrupt, inefficient and downright dangerous to the our material and psychological prosperity? We don’t need a hibernation. We need the Government to take advantage of the dislocation that is currently occurring to make some basic changes. Like wiping out the gig economy. Like … read on. At present, the stimulus interventions, which are mostly about saving capitalism from itself. We should be demanding much more....Bill Mitchell – billy blog
After the 2008 financial crisis, we learned the hard way what happens when governments flood the economy with unconditional liquidity, rather than laying the foundation for a sustainable and inclusive recovery. Now that an even more severe crisis is underway, we must not repeat the same mistake....
There is a pointless internet debate about the trade-off between "the economy" and "health." This is being fueled by a handful of articles from highly privileged people telling poor people to go back to work because it was impacting their stock or real estate portfolios. The reality is that there is no such thing as an "economy" at this point, just "society." Although a shutdown is tenable to flush out infections, the essentials must flow. From a North American standpoint, I believe that the emphasis will be on regions, and regions will unfreeze at different times....Bond Economics
Without stronger and more direct action, the fallout for the most vulnerable will be even worse and the gaps between rich and poor, whites and non-whites in the US will grow even larger. Rather than subsidies for corporations with no oversight why not help state governments fill their budget shortfalls? During the Great Recession, too little was done to help states and they responded by cutting the things that could make a difference: education and healthcare. Cutting back on these things is not just pro-cyclical, which is bad enough, it reduces the future capacity of the states to deal with the next viral pandemic (in the case of healthcare cuts), as well as reducing the growth potential of the economy. As far as transfers, rather than a one-time payment, why not monthly transfers for the duration of the crisis? There is no doubt that sending US households a cash infusion will go some way towards offsetting the reduction in the demand for goods and services. However, a one-time cash infusion will have a much lower dollar-for-dollar impact than knowing there’s money coming in regularly. In the former situation households that can are more likely to set that infusion aside in case things get even worse....Multiplier Effect
We have just seen the beginning of post-COVID economic data, and the numbers are literally off the charts. My feeling is that aggregate numbers will be meaningless, and we will need to look at industry-level data. I just wanted to look a bit ahead, to the post-lockdown future. My main concerns revolve around the small business sector, which I fear will be taking a bigger hit than larger businesses. The issue is that small businesses are a major driver of employment -- and we are likely to start with elevated unemployment levels, even after the "re-start" phase hits....Bond Economics
The Senate’s $2 Trillion Coronavirus Relief Package is not fiscal stimulus and it’s not a lifeline for the tens of millions of working people who have suddenly lost their jobs. It’s a fundamental restructuring of the US economy designed to strengthen the grip of the corrupt corporate-banking oligarchy while creating a permanent underclass that will be forced to work for slave wages. This isn’t stimulus, it’s shock therapy.More disaster capitalism?
Major developments across the globe in monetary and fiscal policy keep happening on a daily basis at present. We are now hearing conservatives, who previously made careers out of claims that government deficits would send nations broke and more, appearing in the media now claiming “We need the state to bail out the entire nation”. Not too many economists are pushing the line that the market will deal with this crisis. They all the want the state to be front and centre as their own personal empires (income etc) becomes vulnerable. In a normal downturn there is not much sympathy for the most disadvantaged workers who bear the brunt of the unemployment. Now it is different. This crisis has the potential to wipe out the middle classes and the professional classes. And suddenly, who would have thought – the nation state is apparently back, all powerful and being begged to intervene. It is wake up time. Now no-one can be unclear about the fiscal capacity of the state. They now know that politicians who claim they don’t have enough money to do things were lying all along. They just didn’t want to do them. And when this health crisis was over we have to demand that the governments continue to lead the way financially and work out solutions to the socio-ecological climate crisis. No-one can say there is not enough funds to do whatever it takes. We all know now there are unlimited funds. The question must turn to the best way to use them. I also provide in this post some further estimates of the labour market disaster that Australia is facing as part of the development of my 10-point or something plan. It is all pretty confronting....
