The webinar featured a Pulitzer-winning economics columnist interviewing an economist of renown, both Mason professors, on the possible economic fallout of the COVID-19 crisis. The conversation was moderated by Mark J. Rozell, dean of the Schar School.
The hour-long session, Stimulating an Economy in a Pandemic, featured Robinson Professor of Public Affairs and Washington Post Columnist Steven Pearlstein and Tyler Cowen, economics professor and chairman and faculty director of the Mercatus Center, Mason’s market-oriented research center.
The conversation, followed by questions from participants, was moderated by Mark J. Rozell, dean of the Schar School which hosted the event.
While Pearlstein maintained that the country should open up in as many sectors as is safe, Cowen made it clear that science and scientists are key to a recovery. “If science doesn’t come through, we’re cooked, big time,” Cowen said. At one point he said the end result of the closure of the economy to the coronavirus pandemic could be worse than the Great Depression.
Pearlstein explained how the U.S. government has at the moment a public that doesn’t want to or can’t spend money and is wrestling with a massive liquidity crisis on top of a credit crisis. He predicted it would take three years to recover fully.
Cowen was less optimistic, predicting five years at least, but “if there is no vaccine, it will be 10 years.”