Ep. 15: How economists can help combat COVID-19

Epidemiology used to be a quiet discipline whose experts were not much used to being in the public eye.   Then COVID-19 happened. Suddenly, epidemiologists everywhere were being called into service to track the virus and formulate a plan to combat its spread. But Boston University epidemiologist Eleanor Murray says there are a lot of questions about the pandemic’s impact that are beyond her field’s expertise. In the Journal of Economic Perspectives, she makes the case that economists have an important role to play in studying and responding to COVID-19.  She recently spoke with the AEA’s Chris Fleisher about why estimated cases and deaths in some of the early models were so wildly different, some of the most urgent questions about the pandemic that economists should tackle, and why she believes it’s important that both fields work together.