Economics of Pandemics

ECON 3201 A

ASSIGNMENT 5

Instructions:

1. You must follow the instructions exactly as described below for completing and submitting your work on cuLearn. Hand written parts of the answers should be legible. Please put page numbers on your answer sheets and scan them into a pdf. You may use Word or another word processing software. I find the ‘Scannable app’, which is free, convenient for scanning documents.
2. Your work must be submitted to the ‘Assignment 5’ folder under the ‘Assignment’

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   December11th,11:59pmEDT

Question 1: 35 points

1. Is there a trade-off between a higher degree of Civil Liberties (CL) and a higher degree of Health Protection (HP) in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic? Discuss carefully in the context of the evidence presented in lecture notes. [20 points]
2. Consider a simple diagram with two axes and the origin at the point (0,0), with the horizontal axis representing CL and the vertical axis representing HP. Now, pick a point in the positive orthant on this diagram as representing the initial point for country 1. Using free hand drawing, graphically represent the answer you provided in part (a). That is, pick points on the figure that will provide the same level of satisfaction for a given (CL, HP) pair of values (hint: it’s a curved line). Now think about different country, country 2, with the same initial point as country 1. Suppose that the population in this country has a relatively strong preference for CL compared to country 1. Graphically represent this tradeoff using a different curved line. How would the shape of the CL-HP trade-off look different for country 2? Briefly explain. [15 points]

Question 2: 35 points

(a) Briefly describe the pattern(s) of aggregate economic recovery in income and labour markets observed at the aggregate level as evident from the 2020 Quarter 3 data. In your view, is the aggregate pattern or ‘shape’ of recovery likely to reflect the experience of all Canadians? Briefly list some factors and provide a few sentences of explanation. [20 points] (b) Is the following statement ‘True’, ‘False’ or ‘Uncertain’ (sometimes true, sometimes false)? Points are for only for the quality of your reasoning/explanation and not for merely stating True, False, or Uncertain.

• The COVID-19 shock is likely to exacerbate financial vulnerabilities faced by many Canadians. [15 points]

Question 3: 30 points Revisit the three countries (other than Canada, U.S., and China) that you studied in Assignment 1 Using the publicly available database Our World in Data. Using the available interface make the figures for the 7-day rolling averages in the following categories:

• Tests per confirmed COVID-19 case, log-scale
• The Case Fatality Rate ( CFR )
• Share of positive tests
• Daily New Confirmed COVID-19 Deaths per million, log-scale

(a) Using the download button, save these figures as .png files and embed it in your pdf file.

Briefly describe and comment on the presence or absence of a ‘second wave’. [20 points] (b) Then briefly describe and comment on the differences in the patterns you observe relative to the September data for the two categories that are common with Assignment #1. [10 points]