Economics professor Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas is among a group of more than 40 leading economists who have contributed to an eBook from the Centre for Economic Policy Research, urging quick and powerful fiscal responses to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. "We are facing a joint health and economic crisis of unprecedented proportions in recent history," he says in his chapter about how to flatten the infection and recession curves. Fiscal policies that governments can use to prevent or limit catastrophic collapses, are like the "intensive care units, beds and ventilators of the economic system," he says.