COVID-19 Collection

A set of teaching and learning materials on the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic as well as an analysis of the COVID-19 outbreak using CORE concepts.

Resources on this page include:

• A novel teaching device simulating the pandemic
• Videos and lecture slides
• Assignments and exercises
• Literature

Lecture slides

• Macroeconomics of COVID-19 pandemic, by the CORE Team.
  The macroeconomics of the COVID-19 pandemic is studied by building on material from CORE’s The Economy. Macroeconomic policy responses are discussed, and insights are presented on the key aspects of reopening economies post pandemic.
• The economics of pandemics, by Rajiv Sethi, Barnard College and the CORE Team.
  Topics include external effects, social preferences, disruption of global supply chains, asset prices and more.

Killing COVID-19 video lecture

A video lecture by Stephen Wright, Birkbeck College, University of London, that goes through some of the key mathematics and economics concepts relating to COVID-19, together with lecture slides and the Excel spreadsheet with the model simulations.

Assignments and exercises

• Some economics of anti-COVID-19 drug development and pricing – student exercises related to the article Patents vs. the pandemic. There are exercises of varying difficulty and type, including a data exercise in Excel. Solutions can be found in the resources.
• COVID-19: Some challenges, some data, by Ralf Becker and Eileen Tipoe, authors of CORE’s Doing Economics. This is an R-based project through which readers can import up-to-date case and fatality data, clean the dataset, understand some of the shortcomings of available data, and visualise the data in charts and maps.
• Assignment for students on the macroeconomics of COVID-19, by Maria Bach, The American University of Paris. This assignment includes questions that link the macroeconomics of COVID-19 to Units 9 and 13-15 of CORE’s The Economy.

Literature

• Visit the Our World in Data website for up-to-date research and statistics, with interactive visualisations.
• The Economics Observatory website publishes daily articles, videos and charts with answers to the economic questions that COVID-19 and its aftermath will bring.
• There is no glory in prevention, by CORE author Georg von Graevenitz. This post describes how scientists, preparedness and luck combined to simplify crisis management in Germany.
• Patents vs. the pandemic, by CORE author A. Jayadev, J. E. Stiglitz and A. Prabhala. In this piece, the authors discuss the problems of the patent system in public health and discuss alternatives. The article is accompanied by student exercises – download the pdf file here.
• The coming battle for the COVID-19 narrative, by Samuel Bowles and Wendy Carlin. Like the Great Depression and WWII, the COVID-19 pandemic (along with climate change) will alter how we think about the economy and public policy,prompting a leftward shift on the government-versus-markets continuum of policy alternatives. But more importantly, it may overturn that anachronistic one-dimensional menu by including approaches drawing on social values going beyond compliance and material gain.
• From the Glossary of The Economy, a selection of terms to confront COVID-19.

CORE’s The Economy glossary (right) compared with standard Econ101 vocabulary (left)

• Background papers and op-eds on the political economy and ethical aspects of the pandemic by CORE author Rajiv Sethi along with Danielle Allen and the Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard. Of particular interest are “Mobilizing the political economy for COVID-19”, the “Roadmap to pandemic resilience ” and “Towards global pandemic resilience “ (with co-authors including CORE authors and teachers Juan Camilo Cárdenas and Belinda Archibong).

CORE materials published on this page are licensed under the CC BY-NC-SA license.