New Zealand's pandemic response: Best practice or just a practice run? ; NZIER Insight ; 84-2020

In: http://hdl.handle.net/11540/11567

Open Access

Abstract

In "(Nearly) nothing to fear but fear itself", a 2009 article for The Economist, French economist Olivier Jean Blanchard argued that in a crisis, policy makers should focus on reducing uncertainty: "Crises feed uncertainty. And uncertainty affects behaviour, which feeds the crisis". Blanchard was writing about the global financial crisis, but his argument also applies to a threat of pandemic. In a world of extreme uncertainty, he wrote, the result is often extreme prudence and the adoption of "better safe than sorry" as the motto. So far, we have seen exactly this response to Covid-19.