Economics 349CV - Advanced Topics in Economics: 'The Economics of the Covid-19 Pandemic'

The Covid-19 pandemic has manifested itself in a variety of micro- and macro-economic phenomena. In this course, we will examine several of these from the perspective of economics, attempting to understand what has happened and to identify possible policy options. We'll consider questions such as: Why are there shortages of certain consumer products? Which industries have been hurt the most/least? What permanent changes may result from workplace experiments during the pandemic? What is the nature of the recession and how does it differ from the Great Recession? What is the thinking behind the stimulus package? What are the anticipated impacts on higher education and on Mount Holyoke in particular? How does one do epidemiology modeling? How can we use econometric modeling to answer questions about the pandemic? How could economic incentives be used to improve our response? Each student will write two short essays and one longer paper to answer questions of their choice.

Prereq: ECON-211, ECON-212, and ECON-220.