A new body would 1) recruit technical research staff from economics and epidemiology to build models and conduct analysis joining the two disciplines; 2) provided regular forecasts of the virus and the economy, under a menu of policy options, under the guidance of a Virus Policy Committee [aping the MPC at the BoE], all open source, minuted, published, with votes and dissents, which govt is free to act on or not as it sees fit and 3) conduct work in the longer term on a) economic policy and pandemic preparedness and b) the longer term micro [eg spatial/locational/sectoral] consequences of the pandemic, and the risk of repeats, and policy options. More information in a Guardian article by myself, and also in blog posts at longandvariable.wordpress.com.
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