Tag Archives: Week 6

Week 6

Targeted Policies and The Pox of Liberty

This is both less and more reading than it looks like.  The Mulligan et al. piece is just out and lays out a straightforward explications of economist on CoVID-19 policy. Next up is a very provocative MIT piece by Daron Acemoglu and his colleagues that tweaks the SIR model and gives some astonishing results — you can watch Prof. Acemoglu present the basic results in the Princeton seminar video. Finally for this section, what do you think of Paul Romer’s argument about soda v. testing?   In his Q&A pay close attention to what he has to say about digital tracing.   

Acemoglu, Chernozhukov, Werning, and Whinston, 2020. A multi-risk sir model with optimally targeted lockdown

After getting through that, it’s time to get back to our historical survey, and this week we do that with Werner Troesken’s work.  What is the thesis of his book?   How does it relate to what Acemoglu et al. and Romer had to say?    

Pulling it Together & Moving Forward:  Policy Options out of Chicago, MIT

Smallpox and a Provocative Theory

  • Werner Troesken “Introduction,” Chapter 1 in The Pox of Liberty: How the Constitution Left Americans Rich, Free, and Prone to Infection. University of Chicago Press, 2015.
  • Werner Troesken “The Pox of Liberty,” Chapter 4 in The Pox of Liberty: How the Constitution Left Americans Rich, Free, and Prone to Infection. University of Chicago Press, 2015.

Professor Snowden’s take:

  • (Optional) Frank Snowden, “Smallpox before Edward Jenner,” Chapter 6 of Epidemics and Society , Yale University Press, 2019. 
  • (Optional) Frank Snowden, “The Historical Impact of Smallpox,” Chapter 7 of Epidemics and Society, Yale University Press, 2019. 
  • (Optional) Frank Snowden, “Smallpox: The Speckled Monster,” and ” Smallpox: Jenner, Vaccination, and Eradication,” Lectures fromYale Open Courses.