Chris Giles: Scientists should take lessons from economists on virus response

"Economics can tell you that efforts to fine tune the progression of coronavirus will fail."

My article of the day comes from Chris Giles at the Financial Times.

For many years, economists have suffered a degree of science envy linked to the gap between the types of experiments that scientists can run the in lab contrasted with the highly uncertain behaviour of agents in non-linear economic systems.

But economics has changed in recent years - although perhaps not as much as we could and should have done - partly in response to the fallout from the Global Financial Crisis.

Economists now draw more heavily on biology, physics, behavioural psychology, anthropology and sociology in trying to build models that don't assume hyper-rationality.

Are some of the scientists involved in shaping UK government policy now making similar mistakes to the economics profession a decade or more ago?

Here is a great quote from the article: "Economics can tell you that efforts to fine tune the progression of coronavirus will fail."

Please do read more to find out why.