Econolimerick #2

4 Types of Heterogeneity that Offer a Bit of Extra Hope for Keeping the Pandemic Under Control without Blanket Lockdowns

Yesterday, in “On the Herd Immunity Strategy” I wrote:

Before we have a vaccine for COVID-19, there are three alternatives to lockdowns:

  1. Massive testing (where tracing can substitute to some extent for number of tests)—see for example “Seconding Paul Romer's Proposal of Universal, Frequent Testing as a Way Out”

  2. Treatment improvements—for example, it is possible the monoclonal antibodies might work really well

  3. Herd immunity of key subgroups of the population—see for example “How Does This Pandemic End?”

That post and “How Does This Pandemic End?” emphasized how spread of COVID-19 among groups (especially the young) that have relatively low personal risk of death from infection and have high social interactivity as soon as a lockdown is loosened even a little might build up partial herd immunity. The correlation between 1st, low personal risk of bad outcome from infection and 2d, high social interactivity (given even a mild loosening of restrictions) is helpful here. Once we have partial herd immunity (which we are still quite far from), it may be that a 3d type of heterogeneity can help us get by with partial lockdowns: the fact that some types of social interaction are much worse for spreading the disease than others. As a result, simply shutting down “super-spreader events” might do a lot of good. There is a 4th type of heterogeneity that also helps: heterogeneity in the cost of social distancing. We should of course continue to have people do activities online if those activities can be done reasonably well online.

Let me focus on the 3d heterogeneity, the heterogeneity in events in this post. To see how powerful this is, note that spread has to do with the number of pairs of people who are near one another for a long time in which one member of the pair is infected and infectious and the other member of the pair is susceptible. If all members of a gathering are near one another for a long time, the total number of pairs in that gathering goes up roughly as the square of the number of people in the gathering. So a gathering of 100 people is roughly 100 times worse than a gathering of 10 people. Using a more precise calculation, one can also say that a gathering of 10 people has 45 pairs, while a gathering of 3 people has 3 pairs, so a gathering of 10 people has 15 times as many pairs as a gathering of 3 people. (One interesting implication of this reasoning is that very small restaurants may present less of an infection-transmission danger than large restaurants, as long as the restaurant staff gets tested with rapid-results tests at high frequency.)

Note that many people, including policy-makers, are talking as if it is just a matter of distance. But duration of being near one another is likely to matter every bit as much as distance. Being 12 feet away for hours and hours may allow effective transmission. (The details of air circulation are also likely to matter.)

Bojan Pancevski’s May 20, 2020 Wall Street Journal article “Superspreader Events Offer a Clue on Curbing Coronavirus” gets into some useful perspective on super-spreader events. Consider the following two passages from Bojan’s article:

  • The theory is that banning mass public events where hundreds of attendees can infect themselves in the space of a few hours, along with other measures such as wearing face masks, might slow the pace of the new coronavirus’s progression to a manageable level even as shops and factories reopen.

Researchers believe that the explosive growth of coronavirus infections that overwhelmed hospitals in some countries was primarily driven by such events earlier this year—horse races in Britain, carnival festivities in the U.S. and Germany or a soccer match in Italy.

  • … mass infections tend to be more serious than those contracted in other circumstances, perhaps because of sustained exposure to a larger amount of virus.

  • The experience of several European countries seems to confirm the special role played by superspreading events. Over the past four weeks, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Norway and other countries that have exited early from lockdowns have removed most restrictions on public life except those targeting mass gatherings. So far, new infections have remained low and constant. Sweden, which never had a mandatory lockdown, managed to control and then reduce the spread by relying on only one restrictive measure: prohibiting gatherings of over 50 people.

Unfortunately, banning superspreader events still prevents life from being all that close to normal. In particular, public transportation is likely to be a big infection danger. Bojan writes:

What about crowded subways and commuter trains? Prof. Small is confident that the use of subways during rush-hour is certain to turn into a super-spreading event.

And with the long duration of proximity, the only way I can see air travel becoming safe is if everyone—passengers and crew—has to have a certificate of a negative test result from a rapid-result test within 24 hours of when they show up at airport security. This should be feasible. The ordinary cost of a single flight makes the cost of a test necessary to be allowed to take that flight look quite reasonable.

Conclusion: There is a big methodological point here: given the number of important heterogeneities in play, modeling of the pandemic and of possible pandemic-control measures won’t get anything near the correct predictions unless many heterogeneities are included in the model.


Don’t miss these other posts on the coronavirus pandemic:

On the Herd Immunity Strategy

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Before we have a vaccine for COVID-19, there are three alternatives to lockdowns:

  1. Massive testing (where tracing can substitute to some extent for number of tests)—see for example “Seconding Paul Romer's Proposal of Universal, Frequent Testing as a Way Out”

  2. Treatment improvements—for example, it is possible the monoclonal antibodies might work really well

  3. Herd immunity of key subgroups of the population—see for example “How Does This Pandemic End?”

I have been frustrated by the relative dearth of forthright discussions of a strategy of going for herd immunity of key subgroups of the population. This relative dearth of forthright discussion is unfortunate, because I think that a herd immunity strategy is what most people who favor relative quick opening up of the economy have in mind, even if the focus of their rhetoric is simply on the high economic cost of lockdowns. One reason it is so important to think through various strategies is that, as I noted in “Two Dimensions of Pandemic-Control Externalities,” pandemic mitigation is not a concave problem: there is every reason to think that there are multiple local optima. If our metaphor is trying to keep damage low, we want a strategy that puts us in the lowest point; but even if we are at the bottom of one valley, over the neighboring mountains might be another valley with an even lower point.

If one is following a strategy that gets to herd immunity that allows the combination of declining COVID-19 prevalence and a return to some semblance of normality even before a vaccine, there is a very important strategic consideration: assuming one is keeping the timing and rate such that bad outcomes for each group given infection are about as low as they can reasonably be, however many infections there ultimately will be in the strategy, it is better to have those infections happen as early as possible, so that gradual improvements in herd immunity make it possible to begin opening up as soon as possible.

There are several things to unpack in what I just said. First, I think the lockdowns we have done so far can be justified by the need we had for greater scientific knowledge about the virus: both what affects its spread, who is at greatest danger, and how to treat it. I think we will have fewer deaths and other bad outcomes per infection as a result of that delay in some of the infections. Second, I am using “herd immunity” loosely to refer to what fraction of the population is immune. Using this loose definition, “herd immunity” is not an either/or thing. If more people in each subgroup are immune, COVID-19 can be kept in check with fewer restrictions on economic activity.

Along the lines of the scenario I discussed in “How Does This Pandemic End?” and in the strategy that Daron Acemoglu, Victor Chrnozhukov, Ivan Werning and Michael Winston study in their recent NBER Working Paper “A Multi-Risk SIR Model with Optimally Targeted Lockdown,” we might be muddling into a strategy of having those with high risk of a bad outcome given infection (especially the old) continuing to do strenuous social distancing, while those with a lower risk of a bad outcome given infection (especially the young) resuming social interactions that will let the disease spread fairly fast among them. If indeed, this is what we are going to do, it is better to do it now than later. It is only if we are going to try to avoid having the young avoid infection entirely and not get immune until the vaccine that we would want to force a strict lockdown on them. In other words, there is a discontinuity between the two strategies.

To get the benefit of strategy of trying to keep the number of infections low even for the young, one has to make it all the way to the finish line keeping those infections low. It is not enough even for that to be the right strategy. One would have to be quite confident one could politically pull it off. But trying to have few young people ever get infected might require such draconian and long-lasting lockdowns that they might not be politically feasible, even if they were, politically unconstrained, a good idea. Jesus made a good point about the low value of an unfinished tower (which can be a good metaphor for being stuck somewhere in the badlands between two distinct local optima):

Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won't you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? (Luke 14:28)

Here, it may not be literally “the cost” that needs to be estimated, but rather the political feasibility of a lockdown-heavy strategy. You might have to do a lockdown-heavy strategy all the way to have it be a good strategy. Are you really able to pull that off?


Some Wall Street Journal Perspectives on the Herd Immunity Strategy

I have seen some relatively forthright discussion of a herd immunity strategy in the news—and of course what is written about the pandemic is so vast that the absolute amount must be high, even if the percentage seems low.

In the May 14, 2020 op-ed “Scenes from the Class Struggle in Lockdown,” Peggy Noonan shows an awareness of the argument that, however many infections we are going to have in each subgroup, (once we get to more or less constant treatment effectiveness) better to have them come early and reopen the economy quickly than have them come late:

It’s not that those in red states don’t think there’s a pandemic. They’ve heard all about it! They realize it will continue, they know they may get sick themselves. But they also figure this way: Hundreds of thousands could die and the American economy taken down, which would mean millions of other casualties, economic ones. Or, hundreds of thousands could die and the American economy is damaged but still stands, in which case there will be fewer economic casualties—fewer bankruptcies and foreclosures, fewer unemployed and ruined.

They’ll take the latter. It’s a loss either way but one loss is worse than the other. They know the politicians and scientists can’t really weigh all this on a scale with any precision because life is a messy thing that doesn’t want to be quantified.

Aaron Ginn, who was interviewed by Allysia Finley for “The Lockdown Skeptic They Couldn’t Silence” (which appeared May 15, 2020), raises many issues relevant for a herd-immunity strategy. I’ll add bold italics to label different issues. Anything indented and set off from now on in this post is from this interview with Aaron Ginn.

One thing he says that I would counter is his suggestion that one meter (3.25 feet) might be enough social distancing. This makes it sounds as if distance is key. But duration is probably every bit as important as distance. Except in a retail context, indoor interactions tend to be of quite long duration and so are likely to pose quite a high risk of transmission. By contrast, most outdoor interactions by those who didn’t arrive together tend to be brief. (On indoor vs. outdoor, see this tweet.)

School Reopening:

One of his priorities is reopening schools. “When it comes to children, the data coming out of Europe is very, very strong,” he says. “You have, I would say, near-unanimous consensus among European scientists, public-health officials—including in Australia, South Korea and Japan—that children, for some reason, while they do get infected, they are not very infectious.”

A recent study from Australia identified only 18 cases (nine children and nine staff) across 15 schools, and only two of the infected children’s 863 close contacts at the schools became ill. Another review last month, published by the Royal College of Paediatricians and Child Health, couldn’t find an instance of a child passing on the virus to adults and noted that the evidence “consistently demonstrates reduced infection and infectivity of children in the transmission chain.”

Sweden Seems to Be Rapidly Moving Towards a Type of Herd Immunity that Allows “Segment and Shield” without a Disastrous Path There:

Mr. Ginn has been closely following Sweden, which has kept children under 16 in school and let most businesses stay open while restricting gatherings of more than 50 people. His daily briefings frequently cite Sweden’s state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, who has argued that government lockdowns lack a “scientific basis” and “people should be able to keep a reasonably normal life.” Dr. Tegnell recently estimated that 40% of Stockholm’s population would be immune to the virus by the end of May.

That could bring Sweden closer to “herd immunity” than countries that have sought to suppress spread altogether. “We need to ‘segment and shield,’ ” Mr. Ginn says, “and let the epidemic go through”: “The question is: How are you going to best protect those that are vulnerable in the larger population?”

…

A paper last week by Stockholm University mathematicians estimates herd immunity could be around 43% if young, socially active people mix more and gain immunity, protecting older, less socially active people. In other words, Stockholm may have already achieved herd immunity. Dr. Tegnell said this week that the declining number of cases in Stockholm supports this possibility.

Heterogeneity in Social Interactivity and Physical Reaction to the Virus Means We Might Only Need Herd Immunity for the Super-Spreader Subgroup to Be in a Much Better Position:

Some scientists say herd immunity would require 60% to 70% of the population to be infected, which would entail massive deaths. Mr. Ginn says those numbers are up for debate. A recent study from a large team of international researchers including some at Oxford and the National Institutes of Health (which hasn’t undergone peer review) estimates that “variation in susceptibility or exposure to infection can reduce these estimates” so that some populations may achieve herd immunity with an infection rate of only 10% to 20%.

All of these claims need to be questioned, but all claims anywhere in the ballpark of these claims need to be seriously considered. It could make a big difference to the optimal strategy.

Don’t miss these other posts on the coronavirus pandemic:

Jerome Powell on How Money is Created

Link to the tweet shown above

Pelley: Fair to say you simply flooded the system with money?

Powell: Yes. We did. That’s another way to think about it. We did.

Pelley: Where does it come from? Do you just print it?

Powell: We print it digitally. So as a central bank, we have the ability to create money digitally. And we do that by buying Treasury Bills or bonds or other government guaranteed securities. And that actually increases the supply of money. We also print actual currency and we distribute that through the Federal Reserve Banks.

Dave Baillie: Calibrate Your Compass

Link to the Amazon page for “Man’s Search for Meaning,” by Viktor Frankl

Link to the Amazon page for “Man’s Search for Meaning,” by Viktor Frankl

One of the best things about the Co-Active Leadership Program I am now a student in is the tight bonds one forms with the other members of one’s “tribe.” I have seventeen new friends that I am very proud of. Dave Baillie is one of them. Dave is a combination of great personal power, great personal warmth and great desire for a deeper understanding of the human condition. Today, I am pleased to be able to add guest post from Dave to the guest posts from my other new friends you can see links for at the bottom. Here is Dave:

Sitting on my patio in southern California, it is now the golden hour, that last hour of daylight that has a special glow and brings a quiet reflectiveness—both about what is past and what is yet to come. I realize that, for me, it has been the golden hour of reflection and reorientation for the last decade and that I am at the dawn of a yet-undiscovered future. A new book in the series of my life has begun with the conscious quest for a beautiful life purpose as I author the rest of my life.

Defining “my life purpose”—my new aims—is something worth puzzling over. I have 56 lived years now under my belt. I open this decade by stepping away from a home city, a career, and a marriage each of nearly 3 decades. 

Central to my efforts toward defining my forward life purpose is the work I am doing in courses given by the Co-Active Training Institute (CTI). (A past protégé who referred me to CTI’s coaching and leadership programs.) I began by thinking about ambitions and goals of a familiar sort. But during a mentoring walk with a career Naval Officer, my dive went deeper than expected as he shared with me his life pivot point while on a mission during the Iraq war in the 2000s. He spoke of virtue, love and a life well led. He urged me to read Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning. Reading Man’s Search for Meaning is helping me reframe my life purpose. I feel as if I am being opened up so that I can discover what life is asking of me—and how I will show up to answer that calling. 

First published in 1946 as A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp and later called Say Yes to Life in Spite of Everything, today’s English edition of Man’s Search for Meaning, includes an Introduction to Logotherapy (1964) and a postscript written in 1984 entitled The Case for Tragic Optimism.  Viktor Frankl’s 1946 work is less a documentary of concentration camps, and more an observation of the psychological effects of going through that harrowing experience, and the understanding he gained of what makes for a fulfilling life—a life with true meaning. Herein lies the core of Logotherapy: to be confronted with and reoriented toward the meaning of one’s life. (The definitions of all the possible meanings of the Greek word logos run on for pages, but one of those meanings is “meaning” itself.) His Experiences in a Concentration Camp opens with a statement that his writing is not intended to be an account of all the suffering—there are other books for that. Instead, Viktor conveys how the experience was reflected in the mind of the average prisoner and how those psychological effects can illuminate a broader understanding of the human quest for meaning.

Man’s Search for Meaning opens with the scene of Viktor disembarking a rail car upon arrival at Auschwitz with his young, and pregnant, wife. Immediately, they were commanded to leave their suitcases on the train and stand in two lines, one for men, the other for woman. There is no mention of a farewell. At the head of the line, a well-dressed SS officer who wielded, literally, a fickle finger of fate, as he wiggled his index finger left or right; right for work, while left led to the gas chambers and crematorium:

The significance of the finger game was explained to us in the evening. It was the first selection, the first verdict made on our existence or non-existence.

Having smuggled the manuscript of his life’s work into camp, he retained some hope, but even this was taken from him as they were stripped naked, showered, and then given prison rags to wear. Nothing of his former life retained.  Later, Frankl realized that the one last vital possession which could not be taken was how he chose to show up in the world, no matter the situation! 

Next to being dragged to a concentration camp, my situation is heaven on earth, but by more ordinary standards, leaving a marriage of 3 decades, moving to a new town, taking up a new career assignment—and, along with many other people, being put under a form of home arrest by this pandemic—are upending.  It has rattled my conception that life is stable, the future predictable. 

As a goad for thinking through one’s life purpose, Viktor Frankl offers this quotation from Friedrich Nietzsche:

He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.

To that, Viktor adds:

It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future - sub specie aeternitatis. And this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence, although he sometimes has to force his mind to the task.

and

The prisoner who had lost faith in the future – his future – was doomed. 

This underscores the value of connecting with a vision of one’s future as well as tuning into one’s purpose.

Whether you have recently experienced a pivot point in your life journey or been knocked off balance by the world’s pandemic shift, you too may be wondering, “what’s the point?  What’s the meaning of life and where do I go from here?” Dr. Frankl’s work has helped me consider these questions for myself. Let me share the process I am using to become better attuned to my true self and to reframe my life purpose—a process that is allowing me to see opportunities and a vision of a resonant future even amid personal upheaval and the ever-changing mess of the world around me.


Searching for Meaning: Dave’s Process 

  1. A life pivot point is any event that can create a fundamental shift to one’s perspective and attitude towards life. Leverage the shift.

  2. Through life’s challenges we alone can choose to play victim or take ownership of our lives.  When things are really bad, as in Viktor Frankl’s situation when everything was taken from him, we may only truly own how we choose to show up. Attitude is everything – so, choose a good one.

  3. Calibrate your internal compass.  Create space and spend time to get to know your true, authentic self again. What virtues do you subscribe to?  What are your boundaries?  What feeds your soul? 

  4. We discover our life purpose only once we take full responsibility for showing up as our authentic selves and stand in our own truth.  When we are impeccable with our word and our actions come from a heart of love.

  5. There is no singular, abstract definition of the meaning of life. Our purpose is not defined by what we expect from life.  Rather, what really matters is what life expects from us.

  6. Life is comprised of tasks (actions) and experiences.  Therefore, life is concrete, not abstract.  By being in tune with our authentic self and remaining open to the challenge and possibility of each situation, we will discover and live our purpose. 

  7. The answers we seek may be found through action, and how we choose to show up.  We can:

    • Drive to shape our fate through creative action, or;

    • Simply accept fate and bear its cross. 

Either may be the “right answer”- the path that is at once authentic to ourselves and responsive to the situation at hand. There is a lot to be said about allowing fate to unfold and then remaining open about what to do next.

There is a third choice.  We can contemplate the situation in order to realize the help and resources that are available, and with these to step into action as our fully authentic selves.  This requires great humility: ask for help and be open to receiving unanticipated gifts.

The answers we seek are be found through authentic action.  But the key is that word “authentic.” To be able to be authentic, you will need to calibrate your compass.


David Baillie is an experienced leadership coach and facilitator who helps managers in public service grow into their full leadership potential.  He has over 30 years experience as a leader in the U.S. Navy and is currently engaged in his next leadership quest through co-active coaching and leadership programs.  He lives in Ventura, CA and may be contacted through his LinkedIN account:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-baillie-209954/

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The Federalist Papers #10 A: Conflicts Arising from Differences of Opinion Are an Inevitable Accompaniment of Liberty—James Madison

Partisanship is an inevitable accompaniment to democracy. Partisanship can be more or less unpleasant, and more or less destructive of friendly relationships, but it will be there. In the Federalist Papers #10, James Madison argues that we can’t get rid of what he calls “faction (which we might define as energetic differences of opinion that affect politics) but that we can mitigate the baleful effects of faction.

The beginning of the Federalist Paper #10 details some of the baleful effects of faction:

  • violence

  • instability

  • injustice

  • confusion

  • disregard of the public good

  • violation of the rights of those in the minority

  • overbearing laws

  • distrust of government

To see how James Madison says this, take a look at the first paragraph of #10:

|| Federalist No. 10 || 

The Same Subject Continued: The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection
From the New York Packet.
Friday, November 23, 1787.

Author: James Madison

To the People of the State of New York:

AMONG the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice. He will not fail, therefore, to set a due value on any plan which, without violating the principles to which he is attached, provides a proper cure for it. The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished; as they continue to be the favorite and fruitful topics from which the adversaries to liberty derive their most specious declamations. The valuable improvements made by the American constitutions on the popular models, both ancient and modern, cannot certainly be too much admired; but it would be an unwarrantable partiality, to contend that they have as effectually obviated the danger on this side, as was wished and expected. Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. However anxiously we may wish that these complaints had no foundation, the evidence, of known facts will not permit us to deny that they are in some degree true. It will be found, indeed, on a candid review of our situation, that some of the distresses under which we labor have been erroneously charged on the operation of our governments; but it will be found, at the same time, that other causes will not alone account for many of our heaviest misfortunes; and, particularly, for that prevailing and increasing distrust of public engagements, and alarm for private rights, which are echoed from one end of the continent to the other. These must be chiefly, if not wholly, effects of the unsteadiness and injustice with which a factious spirit has tainted our public administrations.

Above, I defined faction as “energetic differences of opinion that affect politics.” James Madison’s definition is next in #10:

By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.

James Madison’s main theme in #10 is about controlling the effect of faction. But he must first argue that the causes of faction cannot be eliminated.

There are two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction: the one, by removing its causes; the other, by controlling its effects.

There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.

For James Madison’s readers, arguing that we shouldn’t eliminate faction by eliminating liberty is easy:

It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy, that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.

Then he needs to argue that differences of opinion are inevitable. Here he argues based both on human nature and on differences of self-interest.

James Madison says this about human nature giving rise to differences of opinion:

The second expedient is as impracticable as the first would be unwise. As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties.

The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts.

With no paragraph break, James Madison goes on to discuss differences of self-interest giving rise to differences of opinion:

But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.

Next, James Madison refers to a principle enunciated by John Locke: “People Must Not Be Judges in Their Own Cases.” His intended audience is familiar enough with John Locke’s principle that he doesn’t even mention the name “John Locke.” James Madison says that when broad groups of people have similar interests, it can be difficult for legislation not to involve a group of people effectively being judge in their own collective case. This opens up the way for injustice and the other evils mentioned above. Here is how James Madison argues this point:

No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time; yet what are many of the most important acts of legislation, but so many judicial determinations, not indeed concerning the rights of single persons, but concerning the rights of large bodies of citizens? And what are the different classes of legislators but advocates and parties to the causes which they determine? Is a law proposed concerning private debts? It is a question to which the creditors are parties on one side and the debtors on the other. Justice ought to hold the balance between them. Yet the parties are, and must be, themselves the judges; and the most numerous party, or, in other words, the most powerful faction must be expected to prevail. Shall domestic manufactures be encouraged, and in what degree, by restrictions on foreign manufactures? are questions which would be differently decided by the landed and the manufacturing classes, and probably by neither with a sole regard to justice and the public good. The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling with which they overburden the inferior number, is a shilling saved to their own pockets.

It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. Nor, in many cases, can such an adjustment be made at all without taking into view indirect and remote considerations, which will rarely prevail over the immediate interest which one party may find in disregarding the rights of another or the good of the whole.

The bottom line is that partisanship or “faction” is going to be a problem for any democracy beyond a tiny number of people. So ways are needed to manage it. James Madison sums up this part of his argument thus:

The inference to which we are brought is, that the CAUSES of faction cannot be removed, and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its EFFECTS.

Here are links to my other posts on The Federalist Papers so far:

Pressure on the Fed from the Market and Trump for Negative Rates

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If, in its collective heart, the Fed, or more specifically the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is willing to do negative rates, it may be managing the politics of negative rates by having the market and the President of the United States call for negative rates before it goes there. But if there is a genuine reluctance to use negative rates, not just now, but after the economy broadly reopens, that is a mistake—a big one. As I wrote in “The Wisdom of Jerome Powell”:

History may judge Jerome Powell in important measure on whether he is willing to use negative interest rates to get us out of the hole our economy is in some months from now. The “how” of negative interest rates is now well-worked out, the President of the United States is supportive of negative rates, and there is a clear legal path to negative rates in the United States. So there is no excuse not to use them if they are needed, as they are likely to be.

See also “Narayana Kocherlakota Advocates Negative Interest Rates Now” and “Why We are Likely to Need Strong Aggregate Demand Stimulus after Tight Social Distancing Restrictions are Over.”

Among the arguments against negative rates in the articles shown above, the worry about stress on banks I answer in “Responding to Negative Coverage of Negative Rates in the Financial Times.” Simon Kennedy’s Bloomberg article “Why the U.S. Has Shunned Negative Interest Rates” does introduce an argument I haven’t seen as often:

The risk in money markets relates to concerns that investors could start boycotting them and seek yield elsewhere. The U.S. relies on these markets -- at a size of roughly $4.8 trillion -- more than economies elsewhere. In minutes of an October Fed meeting, officials saw the risk of “significant complexity or distortions to the financial system.”

Here the problem is that we didn’t complete the financial stability fix after the 2008 financial crisis. Money market mutual funds should never, ever, ever be allowed to pretend that their shares are worth exactly $1, because that is pretending that they face no risk. This invites a panic when investors are reminded by events that there is risk in money market mutual funds. The solution is called “net-asset-value” pricing. The Fed, using its regulatory authority, needs to immediately do its utmost to discourage money market mutual funds from pretending their shares are worth exactly $1. At a minimum, it can tell money market mutual funds to have ready a substitute fund with net-asset-value pricing that investors can shift their funds into if and when money market mutual funds begin breaking the buck. There still might be a “run” on money-market mutual funds that look like they might “break the buck,” but if it is a run taking money from those funds and putting it into net-asset-value money-market funds that can already be bought at a discount, then the money market mutual fund system will still continue functioning reasonably well. At any rate, the Fed needs to immediately work on preparing money market mutual funds for the possibility of negative rates!

Addendum: See the related Twitter discussion I have with Ivan Werning and with Jay Kahn and Steve Hou.

Update: An interesting comment in a tweet:

And below is the quotation from Gandalf:


For an organized bibliography of what I have written on negative interest rate policy, see:

An Inexpensive Cold Sore Treatment That Doubles as an Antiseptic Towelette

I have been trying to focus many Tuesday diet and health posts lately on things that can be immediately useful during the pandemic we are in. Here is something that is prosaic, but genuinely useful. Some people have had trouble finding all of the antiseptic wipes they want. Benzalkonium Chloride wipes seem to still be available.

I assume that Benzalkonium Chloride is lethal to the novel coronavirus, but don’t know for sure. (Here is a recent article that is relevant.) What I can vouch for is the usefulness of these Benzalkonium Chloride wipes for another use. Like a large fraction of Americans, I am subject to periodic outbreaks of cold sores. The remedy that my experience showed was the most effective was small vials of Benzalkonium Chloride that one breaks to get the Benzalkonium Chloride onto the little sponge of the applicator. The trouble with this as a remedy is that, because it cost quite a few dollars per application, I was always reluctant to use it in that critical period when I didn’t know whether I had a cold sore or just a minor irritation. Then, searching online about benzalkonium chloride, I discovered that Benzalkonium Chloride wipes were a relatively inexpensive antiseptic wipe. So I made a bulk purchase of Benzalkonium Chloride Antiseptic Towelettes that put things in the 5 cent per towelette range. They would be about 12 cents per towelette if not purchased in bulk, which is still pretty low. So now, when I have any tingle that might possibly be a cold sore, I use a Benzalkonium Chloride wipe immediately and repeat after a few hours, with no inhibition because of the cost. That prevents a lot more cold sores. Indeed, I hardly ever get full-blown cold sores any more.

For annotated links to other posts on diet and health, see:

The Wisdom of Jerome Powell

For the video above: YouTube link; Brookings link; link to full text on the Federal Reserve Board website

Crises often reveal the strengths and weaknesses of leaders. Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell’s April 9, 2020 speech on COVID-19 and the economy impressed me. Let me highlight some passages in his speech that struck me as especially wise. First:

None of us has the luxury of choosing our challenges; fate and history provide them for us. Our job is to meet the tests we are presented.

According to Rod Dreher, this echoes Gandalf:

A young man once confided to a religious elder his anxiety over the hard times in which he was living. This is natural, said the elder, but such things are beyond our control: “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

In fact, the anxious youngster was no man, but a hobbit, Frodo Baggins; the religious elder was the wizard Gandalf, to whom Frodo disclosed his fear on the road to the evil realm of Mordor. 

(From the April 30, 2020 Wall Street Journal op-ed “Courage in the Darkness,” by Rod Dreher.)

Second, both because social-distancing and shutdowns are mandated by the government and because being poor makes every dollar count more, Jerome Powell says we should be conscious of those of low or moderate income who are taking on great burdens as a result of our COVID-19-fighting strategy:

All of us are affected, but the burdens are falling most heavily on those least able to carry them. It is worth remembering that the measures we are taking to contain the virus represent an essential investment in our individual and collective health. As a society, we should do everything we can to provide relief to those who are suffering for the public good.

Third, he emphasizes that the Fed is engaged in lending programs, not spending programs.

Many of the programs we are undertaking to support the flow of credit rely on emergency lending powers that are available only in very unusual circumstances—such as those we find ourselves in today—and only with the consent of the Secretary of the Treasury. We are deploying these lending powers to an unprecedented extent, enabled in large part by the financial backing from Congress and the Treasury. We will continue to use these powers forcefully, proactively, and aggressively until we are confident that we are solidly on the road to recovery.

I would stress that these are lending powers, not spending powers. The Fed is not authorized to grant money to particular beneficiaries. The Fed can only make secured loans to solvent entities with the expectation that the loans will be fully repaid. 

Of course, some of the lending is to lending entities from which the Fed expects repayment only because the US Treasury and Congress are backstopping the solvency of the entity.

[Update, May 17, 2020: Fourth, he both recognizes how hard the pandemic has been on people economically as well as medically, but remains optimistic for the medium- and long-run:

This is a time of great suffering and difficulty and it’s come on so quickly and with such force that you really can’t put into words the pain people are feeling and the uncertainty they’re realizing. But I would just say this: In the long run, and even in the medium run, you wouldn’t want to bet against the American economy.]

There is only one part of Jerome Powell’s speech that to me strikes a false note. He writes of cutting interest rates to zero as if that were a dramatic action. But there is nothing special about zero. The Fed’s target rate could easily go lower. Here is what he says:

The Fed can also contribute in important ways: by providing a measure of relief and stability during this period of constrained economic activity, and by using our tools to ensure that the eventual recovery is as vigorous as possible.

To those ends, we have lowered interest rates to near zero in order to bring down borrowing costs.

Compare that discussion of zero as if zero were special to the discussion the importance of negative interest rates in these two recent posts:

History may judge Jerome Powell in important measure on whether he is willing to use negative interest rates to get us out of the hole our economy is in some months from now. The “how” of negative interest rates is now well-worked out, the President of the United States is supportive of negative rates, and there is a clear legal path to negative rates in the United States. So there is no excuse not to use them if they are needed, as they are likely to be.

But I’ll let Jerome Powell have the last words:

I want to close by thanking the millions on the front lines: those working in health care, sanitation, transportation, grocery stores, warehouses, deliveries, security—including our own team at the Federal Reserve—and countless others. Day after day, you have put yourselves in harm's way for others: to care for us, to ensure we have access to the things we need, and to help us through this difficult time.

Miles Kimball's Discussion of "When to Release the Lockdown: A Wellbeing Framework for Analysing Benefits and Costs," by Layard, Clark, De Neve, Krekel, Fancourt, Hey and O'Donnell

Richard Layard, Andrew Clark, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Christian Kekel, Daisy Fancourt, Nancy Hey and Gus O’Donnell are to be commended for doing a transparent cost-benefit analysis based on well-being of a key dimension of the policy choice we now: how long to continue the lockdowns. And Paul Frijters is to be commended for an excellent discussion of this paper, arguing that despite their bottom line that lockdowns should be ended soon, that Layard et al. are too kind to lockdowns. Let me offer some comments that might point out some aspects of the issue that might not be fully apparent from reading the Layard et al. paper and Paul Frijters’s discussion of it. I will not focus on their assumptions about what the consequences of different policies would be, except to say that their implicit epidemiological model seems too static when exponential dynamics are crucial. I will focus on the economics-of-happiness techniques used for evaluating the assumed consequences of policies.

The first issue to mention is that Layard et al. focus on life satisfaction, but there are many other dimensions of well-being. Indeed the UK Office of National Statistics now measures 4 aspects of well-being on a huge sample each month. No doubt the typical person would be willing to sacrifice some amount of being satisfied with their lives in order to gain in feeling that the things that they do in life are worthwhile. So life satisfaction isn’t everything. I could go on at greater length, but let me bring this up along the way where I can see how it might affect the calculations.

One issue I think is important methodologically—that could affect the calculations either way—is that Layard et al. implicitly assume that life satisfaction of 0 on a 0-10 scale is the level of life satisfaction at which—if that is what one would face form now on—one would be indifferent between living longer or dying immediately. This could be wrong in either direction. 0 is pretty low and most people report quite high numbers. Even a situation in which one reported a life satisfaction of 1 might be so intolerable that if doomed to that for the rest of one’s life, one might actively want to die. On the other hand, one might very much want to continue living even in a situation in which one barely reported a life satisfaction of zero even though one might wish to die in a situation where one had a latent desire to say -4 on the survey but was constrained to a nonnegative number. (Note also that some people who give a 0 for life satisfaction might, say, report a rating of 5 to “Overall, to what extent do you feel that the things you do in your life are worthwhile?” which is another question in the same UK Office for National Statistics survey.) Methodologically, the answer is that surveys need to be used to explicitly ask about tradeoffs between losing years of life and losing points of wellbeing. My understanding is that this is done a lot in the quality-adjusted life-years literature. The corresponding work needs to be done in the well-being adjusted life years literature.

A related methodological issue is that a point of life satisfaction might mean more near the bottom of the scale than at the top (or more at the top of the scale than near the bottom). Asking about tradeoffs with longevity given different starting levels of life satisfaction would be very useful. (The tradeoffs people are willing to make may also depend on the level of lifespan.)

Also, even once outcomes are measured in life-years of a benchmark level of well-being, just adding those life-years up may not be appropriate. One needs to decide how to deal with inequality. This is not addressed in the paper. Taking into account inequality probably makes the results more favorable to ending lockdowns if the economic harm is tilted more toward those of low well-being or low life-span than the health harm is, but makes the results more favorable to continuing lockdowns if the health harm is more toward those of low well-being or low-lifespan than the economic harm is.

Now, on to some considerations that, at least individually, have a clearer direction of effect on the bottom line. On how to value income, Layard et al. write:

There have been literally thousands of studies of the relation between wellbeing and income. They yield broadly similar results, which imply that a 1% gain in income increases wellbeing (measured 0-10) by around 0.002 points.

Layard et al. claim this number is uncontroversial, but Paul Frijters writes:

So they basically chose one of the lowest wellbeing effects of income one can find in the literature, which is the effect of hardly noticed changes in income on life satisfaction –  easily a factor 10 times less than normal for how people have been found to react to noticed losses of income …

Paul also makes another points in two different ways: government dollars can be used to save a lot of lives in ways that have nothing to do with the SARS-CoV2 and to increase well-being adjusted life years in other ways. Valuing all dollars or pounds at the best possible use the government could make of those dollars is probably valuing those dollars or pounds too highly. But valuing that fraction of extra dollars that would actually be extra tax revenue and actually be used by the government to do particular additional things at the value of those additional things seems fair. Even this latter is a big number, Paul argues.

On the valuation of dollars or pounds in life satisfaction or other well-being units, let me point out two relevant concerns.

First, dollars and pounds contribute to many, many other aspects of well-being that people care about besides life-satisfaction. Relative to many other aspects of well-being, dollars and pounds have a particularly low effect on life-satisfaction.

For what it’s worth, in data that Dan Benjamin, Kristen Cooper, Ori Heffetz and our team collected, we found a 1% increase in income raising a broader measure of well-being by .03 to .04 points on a 0-100 scale on which, to avoid top-coding and bottom-coding, we had urged people to use only 25-75, but allowed them to use the whole 0-100 range. That converts to somewhere between .003 and .008 on a 0-10 scale, depending on how you count the effects of our urging of people to use only 25-75.

Second, going the other direction, in this case, we are not talking about a pure loss of income: it is a loss of income associated with an increase in “leisure” broadly construed as the time away from paid work. Some of that extra time away from paid work is devoted to home production that yields reasonably close substitutes for market goods. And some of that extra time away from paid work is devoted to things like bonding time with family and (perhaps distant) friends for which there is no close substitute among market goods. The loss of income coupled with this increase in leisure shouldn’t be as bad for well-being as the loss of income from a lower wage with the same number of hours at work.

Combining the well-being value of a dollar or pound with the number of life-years at stake and the level of well-being at which one would be indifferent between living and dying implies a value of a statistical life or the closest thing to a value of a statistical life in a well-being-adjusted life years calculation. It is crucial to grasp philosophically with the differences between the numbers obtained in this way and the numbers obtained through other methods of getting a value of a statistical life. That is too big a topic for this post, but deserves a lot of thought and discussion.

Unemployment is awful, and an important part of the well-being calculation. But because it doesn’t seem as much like a personal failure, unemployment in this situation may not be as awful as unemployment usually is. Of course, the issue is not just unemployment now, but how long one will be unemployed. That depends a lot on monetary policy. (See and “Why We are Likely to Need Strong Aggregate Demand Stimulus after Tight Social Distancing Restrictions are Over” and “Narayana Kocherlakota Advocates Negative Interest Rates Now.”)

One contribution to the cost of lockdowns that Layard et al. give a relatively small number to is the cost of school closures. Here let me simply say that closing schools now doesn’t have to mean less school total. In the US at least, if this pandemic led to a policy shift toward somewhat more total months and hours per month of schooling, that policy improvement would be an important silver lining, and in any case could soon make up for less schooling or lower quality schooling right now. See “Magic Ingredient 1: More K-12 School.”

Conclusion: On the bottom line of whether lockdowns so far have been justified and whether it is justified to continue the lockdowns for somewhat longer, what I keep coming back to as the main justifications for the lockdowns is to give us time to figure out COVID-19 science. If in hindsight we consider the danger of the novel coronavirus to be low enough that we shouldn’t have done the lockdowns given that hindsight, that is great. It might not have been a mistake given our lack of knowledge at the time, which left open the possibility that the novel coronavirus was much worse. For example, the US seems to have a much greater prevalence of preexisting conditions that interact badly with COVID-19 than South Korea. Without substantial experience, we couldn’t depend on US mortality rates being much, much worse. Alternatively, maybe we needed time to figure out less costly partial lockdowns that could do much of the same job as more comprehensive lockdowns and the more comprehensive lockdown helps us figure out what dimensions of a lockdown are especially cost-effective and what are not so cost-effective. Or maybe some test-and-trace strategy will emerge that has a great benefit/cost profile, but requires that overall incidence not be too high, which it would have been with no lockdown.

Actually, figuring out and hopefully getting somewhat greater consensus on how to approach well-being cost-benefit analysis for our current situation is part of the COVID-19 science that we have bought time for with the lockdowns.

I honestly don’t know what the right policy is going forward. But unlike Paul Frijters, I don’t regret the lockdowns we have done so far as opposed to having done no relatively comprehensive lockdowns (though I regret many other aspects of our history of COVID-19 policy, especially the lack of an earlier response).

Don’t miss these other posts on the coronavirus pandemic:

Also, click on this link to see other posts tagged “happiness.”

Vicky Biggs Pradhan: The Lost Art of Curiosity

The primary theme of Positive Psychology is that mental health is not just about fixing problems—it is also about building strengths. In this vein, I have found Co-Active coaching and Co-Active leadership training to be one of the most powerful tools for building strengths and for tackling psychological problems of the sort that almost every human being has. I believe in this approach; I have voted with my feet by becoming a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (on top of my job as an economics professor) and by participating in the Co-Active Leadership Program. As I have already begun to do (see the links at the bottom of this post), I plan to ask other Co-Active coaches I know and others I know in the Co-Active Leadership program to write guest posts about how to enhance your life by building your psychological strengths and tackling the kind of psychological issues most human beings face. (I am likely to have these appear on either a Sunday or a Tuesday.)

Vicky Pradhan has already written one guest post: “Vicky Biggs Pradhan: How Crises Make Us Rethink Our Lives.” Here is her next installment:

While attending university, I didn’t particularly like studying in the library, as I found it dark and stuffy. Instead, I would study at a bright, welcoming cafe called, “The Curious Mind,” located a couple miles off campus. A soulful Jeff Buckley song always seemed to be playing through the crackly speakers as I walked in the door.  The small cafe was well-appointed with the tables and books-for-sale arranged just right, making the space seem double its actual size. Upon settling in, I would invariably abandon my studies prematurely so I could explore the vast selection of books on display. 

While I acknowledge the power of suggestion that’s kicked off by a name like “The Curious Mind,” I recall feeling as though there was a bright light of inquisitiveness shining within as I engaged with these books. I was open and wanted to learn about new concepts, theories and topics ranging from the psychology of nostaligia to how to effectively run an air traffic control tower. I had an insatiable curiosity. I believed naively it would always persist and would differentiate me from others. However, unbeknownst to me, this belief was about to be challenged as I set off to begin my life as a new graduate.  

At some point in our life, we get a message, either direct or implied, that says we now need to have all the answers. And so, we stop being curious. Asking questions becomes a liability, as it could be misinterpreted as not knowing. Exploration for curiosity’s sake is replaced by the need to be knowledgeable and to be right. It’s as though we’re turning down the volume on our wonder and making a transition from abstract to definitive.  

In my particular case, I began to suppress my curiosity as I progressed in my career. As the professional stakes became higher, my questioning drifted further away—into the distance. This was magnified when I switched industries and I believed proving myself was paramount. I found myself in a competitive industry with people who were highly credentialed, where touting one’s intellect was ingrained in the culture. During this time, my urge to deviate from asking questions to looking impressive came from a desire to build credibility and earn respect.  

My young daughter recently asked me what it was like for us all to live without the internet when I was a little girl. “Were people less curious because they knew they couldn’t have all their questions answered?  Did you just have to shut down your curiosity because there were limited ways to get information?” As I began to explain that the lack of technology didn’t affect how much curiosity I had, I started drifting away into my own private thoughts. It was me and only me who got in the way of my own curiosity, despite having all of the access to information I ever needed. 

We spend so much time in our own heads, putting endless energy into ensuring we are heard, understood, seen and respected.  It might come in the form of needing to have the loudest voice, wanting to formulate the smartest response or being the most knowledgeable in a particular subject, or worse, on all topics. Anything to mask the fear of judgement or being exposed as not being smart enough. When we think we have all the answers, we stunt ourselves. We stop learning and harden.

Quashing our curiosity is especially damaging in relationships. Let me dig into that. What if we could set aside our own agenda and simply get curious about the person we are engaging with and their viewpoint? Imagine how the conversation would change if we took the flashlight we regularly shine on ourselves and point it in the direction of the other person? What if the beam of light shined so bright that it started to illuminate the space between you or me and the one on the other side of the conversation, enfolding that conversation in a warm ambient light?

Most of us think we have to solve, fix and direct in order to be valuable, whether we are leading a business, raising a family, or teaching and doing research. We often experience immediate gratification when we’ve solved a problem or rectified a situation. It’s hard to ignore the ego boost that comes with feedback like “you always know what to do” or “I knew you’d have the answer for me.” When we hear this it inspires us to be even more prepared with the winning solution the next time we are called upon so we can continue to feel valued.  This becomes an addiction, with the crushing of self-worth as a withdrawal symptom. (Ego isn’t always the culprit.  In some cases, we truly do have the best of intentions and we simply want to impart our wisdom to others whom we care about.) 

The next time you are inclined to come to the rescue with a solution or an answer, entertain the possibility that the person who has come to you already holds the answer. Imagine for a moment they actually know precisely what to do.  Perhaps they are in the habit of looking outward instead of inward or they may be seeking reassurance, as they aren’t prepared to own their power quite yet. If you resist the urge to be the hero that solves the problem and instead energize your curiosity to ask questions that help the person gain clarity around their own perspective they can take steps to arrive at their own answers. I propose we make a choice to view those around us as competent and capable.  Consider this seriously for a moment and call to mind a particular person you interact with regularly with whom you frequently share your direction, suggestions and solutions. Envision the shift that would take place if you could see them, not as an object or something to fix, but as a person who is resourceful that you need to better understand. How would the interactions be different? 

If a lack of curiosity can damage relationships, energizing curiosity can often help repair them. During the holidays, I decided to organize old photos and memorabilia from college and the following years. I found a sticky note with a quotation on it, which was unintentionally stuck to a picture of me with my college roommates. The neatly printed words on the sticky were beginning to fade with age. It said, “I do not like that man. I must get to know him better”- Abraham Lincoln. I smiled, vaguely remembering this quotation, and couldn’t help but think that Lincoln’s wisdom, along with my innate curiosity, somehow got buried throughout the years. It brought me back to my beloved Curious Mind Cafe, and made me realize that I was so different then, yet in another way much the same as I am today. It has been an interesting journey, recommitting to curiosity—a secret weapon that has helped me move away from judgment toward discovery. 

Vicky is an executive coach. As I wrote in “Vicky Biggs Pradhan: How Crises Make Us Rethink Our Lives,”

Vicky Pradhan, like me, is a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach, and someone I think would be an especially good fit as a coach for readers of my blog. I had Vicky coach me for a session in order to get a good sense of her style. She is both extremely logical and very emotionally perceptive, and works hard to get to the bottom of things.

See more in my intro to “Vicky Biggs Pradhan: How Crises Make Us Rethink Our Lives.”

Here is some contact information:

Vicky Pradhan, vicky@v2executivecoaching.com

V2 Executive Coaching, www.v2executivecoaching.com

Vicky is the founder of V2 Executive Coaching. She is a certified Co-Active® Coach, CPCC, who coaches entrepreneurs, executives, founders, creators and musicians on their mission towards something bigger than themselves. Her clients are passionate and aspiring towards more fulfillment, stronger leadership, better communication and in some cases more self-acceptance. The one element they have in common is they’ve identified there is a gap between where they are currently and where they want to be. 

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