This is the Kader Daily Podcast for Monday, August 5th, 2024.

I'm Caleb Brown.

When governments grant emergency powers to executive branch officials, it's typically in the name of

taking swift action to save lives but what if the granting of those

emergency powers translated to relatively more deaths during an

emergency economist Christian Bjornzkov is more deaths during an emergency.

Economist Christian Bjornzkov is co-author of the new book out last month,

State of Emergency and Economic Analysis.

We spoke in Dallas in March. We had a pandemic. You may have heard about it.

It was disruptive in a number of ways. There was a lot of unnecessary death associated with it, but relevant to our conversation today,

there were states of emergency declared in states and at the federal level over this, and in

different states, a state of emergency can empower In different

powers by the government, typically the governor,

to take swift action to deal with whatever problems have been caused by this emergency.

And the United States is not unique in that way.

A lot of countries grant powers to executives to take swift action when dealing with an emergency

and you've but you've sort of looked into how powers granted under states of emergency, how they are used, and what conclusions we can

draw based on how governments use those emergency powers, supposed to be temporary emergency powers.

So how did you get at this question?

My colleague Stephen Falk and I met years ago at a conference in San Antonio and skipped

a session and went for a coffee instead.

And Stephen pitched this idea for me that he thought I would like.

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