Experts in the News

Public finance fellow John Diamond discussed the impact of Covid-19 on the economy and health care system during a special edition of Houston Matters. Diamond is the Edward A. and Hermena Hancock Kelly Fellow in Public Finance and director of the Center for Public Finance at the Baker Institute.

The dramatic drop in oil prices means long-term economic damage for the Houston region, said public finance fellow John Diamond.

"A lot of the jobs that are being lost in the oil industry are high-wage jobs,” public finance fellow John Diamond said. “It’s going to impact a different segment of the Houston population.”

"Only the Great Depression would even be remotely close (to the losses this quarter) and I think this swamps that,” finance fellow John Diamond said of the economic costs of social distancing. “There’s been a shutdown of a pretty good part of the economy, and as that goes on that’s going to impact other parts of the economy. It’s a domino effect, and as we go from two to three months to three to four months and every month thereafter, it will get worse.”

"Really it’s pretty obvious: If you have a job and you get paid hourly and you don’t have any unemployment insurance or paid sick leave and you go down for three weeks, how do you pay your bills? How do you do anything?” said John W. Diamond, the director of the Center for Public Finance, about the impact of coronavirus on hourly workers and the need for paid sick leave.