Why solving the information problem should be at the core of our pandemic response: essential reading about the long-term implications of our current crisis. COVID-19 is caused by a virus. The COVID-19 pandemic is caused by a lack of good information. A pandemic is essentially an information problem: this is the enlightening and provocative idea at the heart of this book. If we solve the information problem, argues economist Joshua Gans, we can defeat the virus. For example, when we don't know who is infected, we have to act as if everyone is infected. If we actively manage the information problem—if we know who is infected and with whom they had contact—we can suppress the virus or buy time for vaccine development. Emphasizing that pandemic-induced economic crises are different from past recessions, Gans maps the phases of the pandemic economy and the information needed at each stage to enable recovery. He argues that we should insulate businesses from failure and workers from job loss, and describes economic policy approaches that would help achieve this. He discusses pandemic communication strategies, privacy and public health information, and methods for handling potential vaccine shortages. To innovate our way out of this crisis, Gans argues, we must think creatively and take the long view. Pandemics may be unpredictable, but they can be planned for, and this book provides a roadmap to do so. This is an expanded version of an eBook originally published as Economics in the Age of COVID-19 .

A guide to the pandemic economy: essential reading about the long-term implications of our current crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic has unleashed a firehose of information (much of it wrong) and an avalanche of opinions (many of them ill-founded). Most of us are so distracted by the everyday awfulness that we don't see the broader issues in play. In this book, economist Joshua Gans steps back from the short-term chaos to take a clear and systematic look at how economic choices are being made in response to COVID-19. He shows that containing the virus and pausing the economy—without letting businesses fail and people lose their jobs—are the necessary first steps. Gans outlines the phases of the pandemic economy, from containment to reset to recovery and enhancement. Warning against thinking in terms of a “tradeoff” between public health and economic health, Gans explains that containment gives us the opportunity to develop effective testing that will make it safe for people to interact. Once the virus is contained, we will need to pivot toward innovating, and, finally, we will come together to plan how to protect ourselves from future pandemics. He looks at policy tools that might aid an economic recovery, distinguishing between economic losses during a pandemic and a recession. Gans lays out the economic choices accessibly but with urgency, leaving politics out of it. Economics in the Age of COVID-19 is essential reading for anyone interested in the long-term implications of our current crisis. An open access version of Economics in the Age of COVID-19 for community commentary is available at https://economics-in-the-age-of-covid-19.pubpub.org/