Economics of Pandemics ECON 3201 A ASSIGNMENT 3 Hashmat Khan           Fall 2020 Instructions: You must follow the instructions exactly as described below for completing and submitting your work on cuLearn

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Economics of Pandemics

ECON 3201 A

ASSIGNMENT 3

Hashmat Khan           Fall 2020

Instructions:

1. You must follow the instructions exactly as described below for completing and submitting your work on cuLearn. Hand written parts of the answers should be legible. Please put page numbers on your answer sheets and scan them into a pdf. You may use Word or another word processing software. I find the ‘Scannable app’, which is free, convenient for scanning documents.
2. Your work must be submitted to the ‘Assignment 3’ folder under the ‘Assignment’ section of the course page on cuLearn. Your work must be submitted as a single file

 

in .pdf format. The file should be named as follows:

Lastname-A3.pdf

3. Points correlate with the degree of clarity, quality, and completeness of your answers.
4. Submit by: November 2nd, 11:59 pm EDT.

Question 1: 35 points, 200-250 words

According to Blit (2020), Retail Trade sector in Canada ranks high on both the proximity (approximately 3.5) and the face-to-face (4.6) scales of worker exposure to coronavirus.^[1]These values suggest that high incentives exist to automate operations in this sector. Moreover, 70% of the workers in Retail Trade are in routine occupations, suggesting it may also be feasible to automate operations in this sector.

(a) Describe what pattern in the unemployment pool is likely to arise in this sector during 2020? (b) in 2021-22 and (c) Describe any two distinct economic policies that can affect the patterns you have noted in parts (a) and ( b ).

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Question 2: 40 points, 240-250 words

Imagine a period sometime in the (near) future when the pandemic is over and life has returned to normal. Further, you are providing advice to the Federal government to increase investment expenditures in health and health infrastructure. Can you make a persuasive case?

Question 3: 25 points, 200-225 words

Consider the following statement from the US President’s tweet:

Is this statement ‘True’, ‘False’ or ‘Uncertain’ (sometimes true, sometimes false)? Using your knowledge from the lectures and provide a clear explanation. Points are for only for the quality of your reasoning and not for merely stating True, False, or Uncertain.

(Hint: No data is needed for this question).

[1] Proximity refers to the extent to which the job requires close physical proximity to other people. It is ranked on a scale from 1 to 5 as follows: 1 = do not work near other people, 2 = work with others but not closely (e.g., private office), 3 = slightly close (e g., shared office), 4 = moderately close (at arm’s length), 5 = very close (nearly touching). Face-to-face refers to how often workers in the occupation have face-to-face discussions with individuals or teams. It is also ranked on a scale from 1 to 5 as follows: 1 = never, 2 = once a year or more, but not every month, 3= once a month or more, but not every week, 4=once a week or more, but not every day, and 5= every day.