How Can Economics Enable Us Better to Understand COVID-19?
12 Pages Posted: 12 May 2020
Date Written: May 11, 2020
Abstract
Judging from most news reports, COVID-19 mostly engages contending claims and perceptions regarding public health and epidemiology. This essay does not denigrate the significance of those claims but seeks instead to explain why economics is of far greater significance than standard intuitions seem to allow. Health is one among many values after which people strive; economics is adept at exploring tradeoffs, in contrast to any presumption that public health trumps other values. Even more, economics offers a framework for exploring how the institutional arrangements within which we conduct our lives influences the qualities of those lives, which is a proposition that goes back to the theorists of the Scottish Enlightenment.
Keywords: COVID-19; social complexity; category mistake; undecidability; political economy
JEL Classification: D23, D73, I18, P16
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation