The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed a number of areas where government was unprepared despite years of preparation, but it has also revealed a very un-governmental nimbleness in responding to the economics of the pandemic-induced recession. Economist Joshua Gans says there was no pandemics playbook on how to keep an economy running in a situation like this, and despite the real hardships many are facing today, policymakers have made more right decisions than wrong to this point.
Gans is a Professor of Strategic Management at the University of Toronto and is Chief Economist at the University's Creative Destruction Lab. He's the author of several books on innovation, disruption, and information and artificial intelligence, and his latest is titled "Economics in the Age of COVID-19," which examines the issues and intersection between economics and public health during the pandemic.