Project Syndicate: In May, you and Karsten Neuhoff argued that Europe should already be pursuing a comprehensive policy response to the possibility that Russia will cut off gas supplies. Such a response – as you recently outlined in a policy brief for the German Institute for Economic Research – would start with voluntary saving schemes. During the COVID-19 pandemic, efforts to convince the public to make sacrifices for the public good had mixed success. How should the pandemic experience inform European efforts to prepare for a potential gas shortage?
Isabella M. Weber: We are living in a time of overlapping emergencies: the pandemic is not over, climate change is a reality, and geopolitical stability has reached a nadir. This requires us to reimagine economic policymaking as a form of disaster preparedness. We need to be able to employ both market and non-market coordination to respond to the…
