COVID-19

Prof. Anup Malani awoke to 350 messages. It was March, and India had just instituted a nationwide lockdown. Weeks earlier, the University of Chicago scholar had formed a global task force to help the country’s government battle the growing spread of COVID-19. The group brainstormed solutions, and now they were waiting for Malani to provide direction.

The recent political treatise, “The Narrow Corridor, States, Society and the Fate of Liberty,” by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, is instructive on this issue. The book’s premise, after examining political systems throughout history, is that democracy is a delicate and fragile outcome. It requires both a strong state and individual liberty in a strong society. It can only endure when the two remain in perfect balance, on either side of the narrow corridor that exists between them. The default political condition when the narrow corridor is breached becomes either despotism if the central state wins out or anarchy if the state is defeated.

Does visiting a bookstore put you at greater risk for infection than a fast-food restaurant? As states loosen lockdown restrictions on businesses, Katherine Baicker and Oeindrila Dube have developed a measure of which businesses pose the greatest risk for spreading disease based on factors like crowding, length of stay, and potential for touch contact.