Covid policymaking and the role of economists

Organised by

• Department of Economics
• Department of History
• Department of Law
• Max Weber Programme for Postdoctoral Studies
• Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
• Department of Political and Social Sciences
• Florence School of Transnational Governance
• Crisis of Expert Knowledge and Authority

The Covid-19 crisis was a public health crisis coupled with an economic crisis. In many countries, epidemiologists and health professionals and academics were at the forefront of public health policy making which had large economic impacts. What was the role of economists in influencing policy making? This talk is based on the speaker’s two-year personal experience working in UK Government’s International Best Practices Advisory Group as one of very few academic economists engaged in the external advisory structures set up to support the UK’s Covid response. While the focus is largely based on UK experience, it will touch upon international aspects, and on the economics profession.

Aditya Goenka (University of Birmingham) is an economic theorist whose initial work was on general equilibrium theory and endogenous fluctuations. For the last decade, his research has been on understanding interaction of infectious diseases and the economy in economic epidemiology modelling. He co-edited a recent special issue of the Journal of Mathematical Economics on Economics of Epidemics and Emerging Diseases. Since 2020 he has been a member of UK Government’s International Best Practices Advisory Group formed by Cabinet Office and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to advise on Covid policy making.