MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Why Our Knowledge Economy Can Survive the New Age of Pestilence

Today’s engine of economic growth may lessen the long-term economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

History, it has been observed by an unknown wag, is a sequence of disasters, and the stuff in between is boring. While each catastrophic event is unique in the chaos that it sows and how it shapes subsequent human events, in the throes of crisis, we often look back, seeking patterns to assuage our uncertainty. So it’s not surprising that interest in the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic surged along with the coronavirus earlier this year — but perhaps the important lesson to take from history is not what is similar but what is different.

It would have been convenient if all major disasters could be classified as either purely natural, such as earthquakes, and purely human-made, such as civil war, but the historical record does not always allow such facile categories. Sometimes nature and people work hand in hand to kill, disrupt, and at times change the course of human history when ignorance, cruelty, and the rigid adherence to some cause or ideology aggravate what nature wreaks.

About the Author

Joel Mokyr is the Robert H. Strotz Professor of Arts and Sciences and professor of economics and history at Northwestern University, and the Sackler Professor (by special appointment) at the Eitan Berglas School of Economics at Tel Aviv University.

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