IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp15294.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Hiding the Elephant: The Tragedy of COVID Policy and Its Economist Apologists

Author

Listed:
  • Foster, Gigi

    (University of New South Wales)

  • Frijters, Paul

    (London School of Economics)

Abstract

In 2020 and 2021, the world witnessed policies that caused enormous net damage to nearly every country. We demonstrate the usefulness of the new WELLBY currency in gauging the costs and benefits of COVID policies and review the contributions of Australian economists to the scholarly and public debates about these policies. Our analysis documents the value of what was destroyed, the weak resistance mounted by the Australian economics profession during this period, and the role played by many Australian economists as apologists for Australia's most catastrophic peacetime economic policy failure. We close with ideas for working towards a better future.

Suggested Citation

  • Foster, Gigi & Frijters, Paul, 2022. "Hiding the Elephant: The Tragedy of COVID Policy and Its Economist Apologists," IZA Discussion Papers 15294, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp15294
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp15294.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Frijters,Paul, 2013. "An Economic Theory of Greed, Love, Groups, and Networks," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107026278.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mujcic, Redzo & Frijters, Paul, 2013. "Still Not Allowed on the Bus: It Matters If You're Black or White!," IZA Discussion Papers 7300, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Gigi Foster, 2020. "The behavioural economics of government responses to COVID-19," Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy, Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics (SABE), vol. 4(S3), pages 11-43, December.
    3. Gebhard Kirchgässner, 2014. "On Self-Interest and Greed," CREMA Working Paper Series 2014-12, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    4. Sugata Marjit & Sattwik Santra & Koushik Kumar Hati, 2018. "Status Seeking Behavior of the Poor: A Study on India," CESifo Working Paper Series 7213, CESifo.
    5. Brendan Markey‐Towler, 2019. "The New Microeconomics: A Psychological, Institutional, and Evolutionary Paradigm with Neoclassical Economics as a Special Case," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 78(1), pages 95-135, January.
    6. Robert Huggins & Piers Thompson, 2015. "Entrepreneurship, innovation and regional growth: a network theory," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 45(1), pages 103-128, June.
    7. Emerson, David & Mulley, Corinne & Bliemer, Michiel C.J., 2016. "A theoretical analysis of business models for urban public transport systems, with comparative reference to a Community Franchise involving Individual Line Ownership," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 368-378.
    8. Foster, Gigi & Pingle, Mark & Yang, Jingjing, 2019. "Are we addicted to love? A parsimonious economic model of love," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 70-81.
    9. Gigi Foster, 2018. "Towards a living theoretical spine for (behavioural) economics," Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy, Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics (SABE), vol. 2(1), pages 75-81, March.
    10. Carina Keldenich & Christine Luecke, 2022. "Unlucky at work, unlucky in love: job loss and marital stability," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 20(1), pages 243-278, March.
    11. Qlander Hayat & Sayyed Muhammad Mehdi Raza Naqvi, 2019. "Antecedents and Consequences of Employee's Greed: An Empirical Examination (Evidence from Pakistan)," Global Regional Review, Humanity Only, vol. 4(3), pages 73-81, September.
    12. Gigi Foster, 2023. "Reply to Rati Mekvabishvili's 'On the Importance of Altruism, Prosocial Behavior and Christian Love in Behavioral Economics research'," Economic Thought, World Economics Association, vol. 11(1), pages 58-65, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    COVID-19; economics profession; WELLBY; welfare; health policy; Australia;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being
    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
    • A11 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Role of Economics; Role of Economists

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp15294. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.