The Economic Costs of the Pandemic

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The Economic Costs of the Pandemic: Catholic Social Teaching and Economics in Dialogue

Tuesday, May 5, 2020
6:00PM ET
Registration required

Join us at 6:00PM ET (5:00PM CT) on Tuesday, May 5th as we cosponsor, together with the Lumen Christi Institute, a webinar on “The Economic Costs of the Pandemic: Catholic Social Teaching and Economics in Dialogue.” In this timely dialogue, economists Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde (Penn), Joseph Kaboski (Notre Dame) and Casey Mulligan (University of Chicago) will share their thoughts on economics, Catholic social thought, and the cost of the pandemic. The Saint Benedict Institute is a cosponsor of this event.

This event is free and open to the public, but online registration is required. For more information and to register for this webinar, click here.

COVID-19 has put much of the world on standstill for the sake of reducing the risk to some of its citizens. What has been the cost of this in terms of economic recession, unemployment, human suffering, and even mortality? When the pandemic subsides, will government action be justified or will it have aggravated human suffering in an "economy that kills”? How do we measure or place values on the tradeoffs in terms of lives saved versus economic costs and human suffering? Join us for a dialogue between Economists Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde (Penn), Joseph Kaboski (Notre Dame) and Casey Mulligan (University of Chicago) on Economics, Catholic Social Thought, and the cost of the pandemic.


Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde is Professor of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. He serves as a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Penn’s Population Studies Center, and the Centre for Economic Policy Research. His research focuses primarily on the computation and estimation of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models. He is co-author ofMacroeconomics: A Dynamic Approach (Forthcoming from Princeton University Press).

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Joseph Kaboski is the David F. and Erin M. Seng Foundation Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at the University of Notre Dame. He holds a PhD from the University of Chicago. Kaboski's research focuses on growth, development, and international economics. In 2012, he was awarded the prestigious Frisch Medal for the best paper in the journal Econometrica and has published scholarly articles in many other journals, including the American Economic Review and The Journal of Economic Theory. He is the president of CREDO, a past consultant to Catholic Relief Services, and is currently a Consultant to the USCCB, Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development.

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Casey B. Mulligan, Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago in 1993. He has also served as Chief Economist of the White House Council of Economic Advisers and as a visiting professor teaching public economics at Harvard University, Clemson University, and the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago. Mulligan's research covers capital and labor taxation, the gender wage gap, health economics, Social Security, voting and the economics of aging. He is author of Side Effects and ComplicationsThe Redistribution RecessionParental Priorities and Economic Inequality, and most recently co-wrote Chicago Price Theory. He has also written numerous opeds and blog entries for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and the Chicago Tribune.