I came across this Japanese poster promoting masks to protect people against the 1918 flu pandemic. America is just beginning to inform its citizens about masks. It's a good example of how a century of public health education paid off in Japan.
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Here's a great opportunity for international economists (especially junior ones) to get back on the conference circuit:
sites.google.com/site/alecun…
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There is a fun video in Japanese (piped.video/watch?v=pG9mwk6S…) that just came out explaining the main points of a recently released paper with Reka (@juhreka13) and Shogo on the globalization of the Industrial Revolution (nber.org/papers/w32667)
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The NBER Japan Project Meeting is scheduled for December 16-17, 2021 in Tokyo. If you have a paper on Japan, please submit it by July 8 here: conference.nber.org/confsubm…
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I'm looking to hire a research assistant ("Staff Associate") for a two-year position doing lots of interesting work. People use the position as a stepping stone to econ PhD programs. If that's your dream, apply! apply.interfolio.com/94547
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I'm not saying that everyone who cites my research in their campaign speeches will get a shot at the White House, but.... politifact.com/factchecks/20…
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This piece is so on the mark, it could have been written by an economist (with a sense of humor, if that’s possible...) nytimes.com/2020/08/24/opini…
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I was very sorry to hear about the passing of Peter Neary. He was a gentleman and a scholar. Witty and brilliant. I will remember fondly our many dinners together.
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@econ_ra I'm looking to hire a predoc starting next summer to work for me on papers related to trade, finance, macro, and development. It's a great opportunity to hone programming skills and learn how economics research is done. You can apply here: apply.interfolio.com/132998
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This is an important insight that is both true and not obvious. Co-authoring is not about comparative advantage tradediversion.net/2017/10/1… via @TradeDiversion
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A friend shot this picture of a Tokyo subway. Japan's high density, early exposure, elderly population, minimal lockdown, lack of testing, and extremely low mortality rate is a puzzle I can't explain. Is it masks? hygiene? bowing instead of shaking hands? We're missing something.
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Comparing ourselves to Europe may understate how much we've mismanaged the epidemic. Using deaths per capita instead of cases and including Japan (where there was little testing, but masks were distributed to every household) gives a clearer picture of the counterfactual
This is the chart that I think best captures the extent of the US debacle. It adjusts both for population and for the fact that the US surge started later. And it's damning
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Fascinating paper showing that mask-wearing explains international Covid-19 infection rates theoretically and empirically. Best explanation I've seen for why Asia (plus Slovenia and Slovakia) did so much better than Europe and America. See arxiv.org/pdf/2004.13553.pdf
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There's a quiet functionality in Japan that people often miss. For example, Japan's COVID death rate is 6-10 percent that of Europe and the US; the long-run growth rate of GDP per work hour is comparable; and unemployment (and crime) rates are low. economist.com/special-report…
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After imposing mask requirements, the number of daily new COVID19 cases in New York City (329 on 8/8) fell to almost the same level as that in Tokyo (331). So when Americans wear masks, they avoid COVID19 just like the Japanese.
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This is very nice piece explaining why the Israeli data does not show declining vaccine efficacy after controlling for age and vaccination rates. covid-datascience.com/post/i…
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New paper Chernozhukov, Kasahara, and Schrimpf shows that if the US had just mandated masks for employees on April 1, the US would have reduced Covid-19 deaths by 30-57 thousand by the end of May. Not bad for a policy that is almost costless. medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
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The WSJ’s argument for defunding the WHO: “The WHO...wastes money promoting government-run health care and attacking tobacco companies." Clearly, an organization that attacks big tobacco in the interest of public health has gone way too far. wsj.com/articles/a-reckoning…
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Interesting. My sense after reading Barry’s history of the 1918 pandemic is that the US response was uncoordinated and inconsistent, which, as you point out, is like today. He gives lots of examples of experts pleading with gov’t officials who didn’t listen.
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U.S. citizens are now officially persona non grata in most of the world. Source edition.cnn.com/travel/artic…
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Germany Has Relatively Few Deaths From Coronavirus. Why? nyti.ms/2WOYqpH We need to better understand why some countries—-especially those in Asia like Japan, Taiwan, and Korea—-have this far avoided the fates of the US and much of Europe.
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Interesting piece on why the US COVID death rate is 60 times higher than Japan. economist.com/asia/2020/12/1…
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Of countries with good reporting of mortality from the 1918 flu, deaths per 1000 people were Italy, 10.6; Spain, 8.3; England, 5.8; US, 5.2; Japan 4.5. Why was Japan so low? Japan's Gov't pushed free masks and inoculation fast. Source: jstor.org/stable/132645?seq=…
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Interesting paper that shows layoffs shave 1-1.5 years off a displaced person's life on average. Has anyone estimated whether net US mortality will go up or down if we stop COVID-19 at a cost of 5 million layoffs?econ.ucla.edu/tvwachter/pape…
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Interesting paper by Tsutomu Watanabe shows how COVID19 is affecting sectors differently in Japan using credit card data carf.e.u-tokyo.ac.jp/admin/w…
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Really interesting paper suggesting that countries that had mandatory BCG vaccinations (against tuberculosis) have much lower COVID-19 death rates (medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/…)
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Some interesting results from my colleague Vishal Misra on Trump’s tariffs and consumer prices: peerunreviewed.blogspot.com/…
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@JonSteinsson pointed me to some studies (one done by my former student Maxim Pinkovskiy) showing that BCG vaccines are not the explanation for international differences in infection rates: jamanetwork.com/journals/jam… and cepr.org/sites/default/files…
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The puzzle continues: even excess deaths in Tokyo (yellow line) show no increase in 2020: bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
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Interesting website showing Imperial College London's estimates of R0 by state. Good news (mostly) for the Northwest and Northeast. Bad news for Southern and Midwestern states. mrc-ide.github.io/covid19usa…
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Chinese study of all 318 outbreaks b/n 1/4/20 and 2/11/20 with 3 or more confirmed infections found home transmission was involved in 80% of infections, public transportation, 34%; 0.3% happened outdoors. Note that outbreaks can arise from multiple sources medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
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We show how to use stock-market event studies to evaluate the welfare impacts of policies. Markets expect the US-China trade war to have a much bigger impact on US welfare than standard models suggest
New CEPR Discussion Paper - DP16093
Trade Protection, Stock-Market Returns, and Welfare
Mary Amiti @NewYorkFed, Sang Hoon Kong @columbia_econ @Columbia, David Weinstein @deweinstein @columbia_econ @Columbia
ow.ly/ol9r50EEax8
#CEPR_ITRE
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