Keywords
Ronald coase
Government failure
Blackboard economics
Ceteris Paribus reasoning.
How to Cite
Abstract
Abstract. We are grateful to the editors and the publishers of the book in which this chapter appears, for that manner of that appearance is unusual. Save for the correction of slips and what it is hoped are some minor stylistic improvements, this chapter has been left as it was when it was given what the authors thought was a shape ready for publication sometime in early 2021. The central thinking of the chapter had taken shape sometime in late 2020. The wish to publish a chapter which will, then, be three years out of date when it appears would anyway require explanation, but this is a fortiori the case with a chapter on a topic so quickly and dramatically shifting as the evaluation of the UK government’s response to the outbreak of Covid in early 2020. In essence, such significance as the chapter possesses is that it shows that, at the time that what is in the chapter called ‘inchoate communism’ was generating lockdown, an immensely superior alternative was perfectly possible, had the UK government taken what can, consistent with the title of this book, be called a ‘conservative’ approach to regulation.
Keywords. Covid-19 pandemic; Ronald coase; Government failure; Blackboard economics; Ceteris Paribus reasoning.
JEL. F51; F52; P16; P26; P48.References
Bakunin, M. (1990). Statism and Anarchy, Cambridge University Press.
Cabinet Office, (2020). Covid-19 response: Spring 2020, 22 February. [Retrieved from].
Campbell, D. (2000). Of coase and corn: A (sort of) defence of private nuisance, Modern Law Review, 63(2), 197-512. doi. 10.1111/1468-2230.00259
Campbell, D. (2016). Ronald Coase’s “The Problem of Social Cost”, University of Queensland Law Review, 75, 88-97.
Campbell, D. (2017a). The sense in Coase’s critique of Pigou, The Journal of Law, Economics and Policy, 13(1), 39-54.
Campbell, D. (2017b). Cleverer than command?, Review of D Halpern, Inside the Nudge Unit, Social and Legal Studies, 26(1), 111-126. doi. 10.1177%2F0964663917692716
Campbell, D. (2018). The “market” in the theory of regulation, Social and Legal Studies, 27(5), 545-571. doi. 10.1177%2F0964663917730122
Campbell, D., & Lee, R. (2003a). Carnage by computer: The blackboard economics of the 2001 foot and mouth epidemic, social and legal studies, 12(4), 425-459. doi. 10.1177%2F0964663903012004002
Campbell D., & Lee, R. (2003b). The power to panic: The animal health act 2002, Public Law, 372-386.
Campbell D., & Klaes, M. (2005). The principle of institutional direction: Coase’s regulatory critique of intervention, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 29(2), 263-288. doi. 10.1093/cje/bei027
Chawla, D.S. (2020). Critiqued coronavirus simulation gets thumbs up from code-checking efforts, Nature, 582, 323-324. doi. 10.1038/d41586-020-01685-y
Coase, R.H. (1986a). The firm, the market and the law, in The Firm, the Market and the Law University of Chicago Press.
Coase, R.H. (1986b). The problem of social cost, in Coase, The Firm, the Market and the Law, University of Chicago Press.
Coase, R.H. (1986c). Notes on the problem of social cost, in Coase, R.H. The Firm, the arket and the Law, 179-185.
Coase, R.H. (1994). Economists and public policy, in Essays on Economics and Economists University of Chicago Press.
Coase R.H., & Wang, N. (2013). How China Became Capitalist, Palgrave Macmillan.
Coase R.H., & Williams, E.W. (1964). The regulated industries: Discussion, American Economic Review (Papers and Proceedings) 54(3), 192-195.
Cross, F.B. (1996). The paradoxical perils of the precautionary principle, Washington and Lee Law Review, 53, 851-925.
Department of Health and Social Care, (2020). UK pandemic preparedness, 5 November.
Dingwall, R. (2021). Waiting for zero covid would be a foolish error, The Daily Telegraph, London, 2 January.
Dodsworth, L. (2021). A State of Fear, Pinter and Martin.
Ferguson N. et al, (2005). Strategies for containing an emerging influenza pandemic in Southeast Asia, 437(7056) Nature. doi. 10.1038/nature04017
Goklany, I.M. (2001). The Precautionary Principle, Cato Institute.
Gramsci, A. (1977). Address to the anarchists’ in Selections from the Political Writings 1910-20, Lawrence and Wishart.
Hayek, F.A. (2014). The theory of complex phenomena, in Collected Works, vol.15 The Market and Other Orders, Routledge.
Higgs, R. (2012). Crisis and Leviathan (OUP 1987). On the specific part concerns about ‘safety’ have played see Robert Higgs, Neither Liberty Nor Safety, Independent Institute.
Imperial College Covid-19 Response Team, (2020). Report 9: Impact of Non-pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs) to Reduce Covid-19 Mortality and Healthcare Demand, 16 March. [Retrieved from].
Ioannidis et al, (2020). The rapid, massive infection of the scientific literature and authors by covid-19, 16 December. bioRxiv, [Retrieved from].
Jones, S. (2020). The global impact of imperial’s covid-19 response team, 11 August. Imperial College London News. [Retrieved from].
Kelly, J. (2020). Imperial’s Neil Ferguson: “We don’t have a clear exist strategy”, Financial Times, London, 7 April. [Retrieved from].
Kolakowski, L. (1990). Politics and the devil’ in Modernity on Endless Trial, University of Chicago Press.
Kornai, J. (2003). The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism, Oxford University Press. doi. 10.1093/0198287763.001.0001
Kulldorff, M., Gupta, S., and Battacharya, J. (2020). The Great Barrington Declaration, 4 October. [Retrieved from].
Malle, S. (1985). The Economic Organisation of War Communism 1918-21, CUP.
National Audit Office, (2020). Overview of the UK Government’s Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic HC, No.2019-21, 21 May.
Oliver, D. (2020). Let’s be open and honest about covid-19 deaths in care homes, British Medical Journal, 369. doi. 10.1136/bmj.m2334
Pigou, A.C. (1932). Economics of Welfare, 4th edn, Macmillan.
Poole, T. (2020). A new relationship between power and liberty, Prospect, 23 May. [Retrieved from]
Popper, K. (1966). The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol.1 5th edn, Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Rayner, G. (2021). State of fear: Ministers “used covert tactics” to keep scared public at home, The Daily Telegraph, London, 3 April.
Rayner, G., Fisher, L., & Knapton, S. (2021). I am deeply sorry for every life that has been lost, The Daily Telegraph, London, 27 January.
Smith, A. (1979). The Theory of Moral Sentiments, The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence, vol.1 corr edn, Clarendon Press.
Smith, A. (1976). The Wealth of Nations, The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence, vol.2 Clarendon Press.
Stewart, D. (1980). Account of the life and writings of Adam Smith LLD’ in Adam Smith, Essays on Philosophical Subjects, The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence, vol.3, Clarendon Press.
Sumption, J. (2021). Government by decree; Covid-19 and the British constitution, in Law in a Time of Crisis, Profile Books, pp.220-224.
Sumption, J. (2020). The only coherent position is locking down without limit or not locking down at all, 26 May. Prospect, [Retrieved from].
Sunstein, C.R. (2009). Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle, CUP.
Swinford, S. (2021). Fears that spread of variant may end in tiers, The Times, London, 18 May.
The Prime Minister, (2021). PM statement at coronavirus press conference, 23 March. [Retrieved from].
Verity, R. et al. (2020). Estimates of the severity of covid-19 disease, 13 March. medRxiv, [Retrieved from].
Whipple, T. (2020). People don’t want a lockdown so they undermine the scientists, The Times London, 26 December.