The Macroeconomics of COVID-19

Brought to you by Hopkins at Home

The world is in a deep recession caused by the coronavirus. It is a recession unlike any other in the past century at least. Join Dr. Jonathan Wright as he leads us in an hour-long discussion focused on how to think about the short- and longer-term effects of the coronavirus on US economic activity. It will summarize monetary and fiscal policies that have been put in place and their likely mitigating effects. Finally, the talk will touch on the tradeoffs between public health and economic costs including unemployment.

Jonathan Wright is a professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University, specializing in empirical macroeconomics and finance and time series econometrics.  His recent topics of research include high-frequency effects of macroeconomic news announcements, forecasting, seasonal  adjustment, the term structure of interest rates, and unconventional monetary policy.  He is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.  Prof. Wright is an associate editor of the Journal of Applied Econometrics, Journal of Econometrics and Journal of Monetary Economics, and former coeditor of the Journal of Applied Econometrics and Journal of Business and Economic Statistics.  From 1999 to 2008, he worked at the Federal Reserve Board in the Divisions of International Finance and Monetary Affairs, ending as deputy associate director.  He has also taught at the University of Virginia, University of Pennsylvania and University of Maryland.  Jonathan Wright did a B.A. at Trinity College Dublin, an M.Sc. at the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. at Harvard University.