Welcome back to Ten Blocks. This is your host, Brian Anderson.

Joining us on today's show is Arpet Gupta. Arpit is an assistant

professor of finance at NYU Stern School of Business, and he's an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan

Institute. You can follow him on Twitter at Arp Itrage, A-R-P-I-T-R-A-G-E, is also written for CityJROM.

Professor Gupta is a co-author, along with the epidemiologist Jonathan Allen, of a new report

published by the Manhattan Institute just this week called a Strategy for Reopening New York

City's economy.

You can find it on MI's homepage, and we'll link to it in the description.

We're here today to talk about the report and some of the measures they propose for getting New Yorkers

and commuters back to work safely. As our regular listeners know, it's been over a month since

the city entered into lockdown, and no one yet knows when we can expect to be able

to return.

Arpit, thanks very much for joining us.

Thanks so much for having me on, Ryan.

To start with, let's just lay out some of the current situation.

New York, as I think most people know, is born the brunt of the pandemic to date

in the United States. The city itself accounts, I think, for more than a quarter of all U.S.

COVID-related deaths. For that reason, the city faces a kind of unique challenge, both controlling

the outbreak and reviving an economy battered by the

shutdown. Your report addresses both of those things, which we'll get to momentarily, but I'd

like to get your sense on the scope of the economic crisis facing the city in particular, but

maybe even more broadly, the whole country.

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