Economics in the Time of COVID-19
travel could be withheld without restrictions; anyone who comes or returns from there
must undergo a medical examination and possibly spend a few weeks in quarantine.
This would not only build a virtual plague wall against the next major outbreak, it
would also put pressure on health authorities around the world to restrict dangerous
practices that allow pathogens to jump from one species to the next. Even if airlines,
hoteliers and tour operators would suffer from such rules in the short term and would
complain, the lesson from Wuhan should be that we need a broad discussion within and
outside of academia about how much mobility is actually desirable.
References
Campante, F and D Yanagizawa-Drott (2018), “Long-Range Growth: Economic
Development in the Global Network of Air Links”, The Quarterly Journal of Economics
133(3): 1395–1458.
Sala-i-Martin, X (2006), “The World Distribution of Income: Falling Poverty and...
Convergence, Period”, The Quarterly Journal of Economics 121(2): 351-397.
Viscusi, W K and C J Masterman (2017), “Income Elasticities and Global Values of a
Statistical Life”, Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis 8(2): 226-250.
About the author
Hans-Joachim Voth (D.Phil, Oxford, 1996), holds the UBS Chair of Macroeconomics
and Financial Markets at the Economics Department, Zurich University. He is an
economic historian with interests in financial history, long-term persistence and
growth, as well as political risk and macroeconomic instability. Hans-Joachim Voth is
a Research Fellow in the International Macroeconomics Program at CEPR (London),
a member of the Royal Historical Society, a joint Managing Editor of the Economic
Journal, an Editor of Explorations in Economic History, and an Associate Editor at the
Quarterly Journal of Economics.