Question 3: Using not only the policy tools that have been part of the UK policy mix thus far but also policy tools implemented in other countries, to what extent does the government face a tradeoff between saving lives and preserving livelihoods?
Answer:
Large tradeoff
Confidence level:
Very confident
Comment:
For better or worse, there is a difficult tradeoff here. The lives saved are predominantly the elderly and the sick. The livelihoods preserved are predominantly the poor and the young. I would add that lockdowns do not just affect livelihoods, they contribute to deaths through despair, suicide, and faliure to access medical care for otherwise treatable conditions.
Question 2: How much will the new lockdown measures introduced on Thursday November 5 hurt UK economic activity this year relative to a counterfactual with the milder measures adopted over the summer?
Answer:
Large damage
Confidence level:
Confident
Comment:
Large ... medium small? That's hard to assess. What is clear is that economic activity will be lower as a a consequence and the incidence will fall disproportionately on the poor.
Question 1: How much of the decline in GDP experienced to date would have been avoided in the absence of any lockdown measures or other policy interventions (such as fiscal support)?
Answer:
A substantial portion or the entire decline
Confidence level:
Extremely confident
Comment:
The incidence of Covid falls almost entirely on the elderly. At the risk of being misinterpreted the elderly do not contribute substantially to GDP. This is NOT a moral judgement of any kind. It is a statement of fact.
Question 3: Which of the following best reflects your opinion on the following statement? “The ECB should explicitly recognize unemployment and/or economic growth as a secondary aim, secondary to its price stability mandate.”
Question 3: To what extent will school closures increase gender inequality due to unequal gender distribution of the burden of school closures?
Answer:
To a small degree but persistently
Confidence level:
Confident
Comment:
I could foresee that reallocations of household tasks and gender based reallocations in corporate structures might have persistent effects on the way that adults choose to spend their time.
The CFM surveys informs the public about the views held by prominent economists based in Europe on important macroeconomic and public policy questions. Some surveys focus specifically on the UK economy (as the CFM is a UK research centre), but surveys can in principle focus on any macroeconomic question for any region. The surveys shed light on the extent to which there is agreement or disagreement among these experts. An important motivation for the survey is to give a more comprehensive overview of the beliefs held by economists and in particular to include the views of those economists whose opinions are not frequently heard in public debates.
Questions mainly focus on macroeconomic and public policy topics. Although there are some questions that focus specifically on the UK economy, the setup of the survey is much broader and considers questions related to other countries/regions and also considers questions not tied to a specific economy.
The surveys are done in collaboration with the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR).
Lockdowns and UK Economic Performance
Question 3: Using not only the policy tools that have been part of the UK policy mix thus far but also policy tools implemented in other countries, to what extent does the government face a tradeoff between saving lives and preserving livelihoods?
Question 2: How much will the new lockdown measures introduced on Thursday November 5 hurt UK economic activity this year relative to a counterfactual with the milder measures adopted over the summer?
Question 1: How much of the decline in GDP experienced to date would have been avoided in the absence of any lockdown measures or other policy interventions (such as fiscal support)?
Should the ECB Reformulate its Inflation Objective?
Question 3: Which of the following best reflects your opinion on the following statement? “The ECB should explicitly recognize unemployment and/or economic growth as a secondary aim, secondary to its price stability mandate.”
The Economic Cost of School Closures
Question 3: To what extent will school closures increase gender inequality due to unequal gender distribution of the burden of school closures?
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