This week - what lessons can economists learn from how a virus spreads, and what pitfalls should they avoid? Our guest, the distinguished economist Paul Ormerod, suggests that the macro-modellers of the Covid-19 virus might have missed a trick; put simply, they didn’t properly take into account the fact that people faced with a situation – any situation – are highly likely to change their behaviour as a result. And if economics is all about human behaviour, should economists have been as closely involved as epidemiologists in modelling the approach to managing the virus back in March?

In the second part of the podcast, Paul Diggle and Stephanie Kelly discuss the search for a vaccine, and how the ASI Research Institute has tried to extend the kind of thinking that Paul Ormerod was talking about by building a framework to measure vaccine development and output.