From soccer superstars to economics superstars

I must confess that I used to watch too many soccer matches. Do I miss them? Not much. I guess that humans have a high ability to adapt. There are some historical soccer matches on TV these days, but it is not the same experience. We will see whether soccer recovers its recent weight on the preferences of people like me, or our children's generation, once the pandemic is over. Suddenly, we have realized that life offers other things beyond enjoying games played by Leo Messi.
But while Messi and other soccer superstars cannot telework, economic superstars can, or at least one can enjoy their work online even if the work was produced some time ago. The depreciation rate of economics superstars' work is lower than for soccer superstars. For example, I am in the middle of a self-imposed program of watching everyday one of the 18 lessons taught by Raj Chetty on Economics and Big Data at Harvard (around one year ago). It is an excellent course. It is teaching frontier econometrics by example. By looking at his (or others') work he introduces first year students to the world of quasi-experiments, but also to basic statistical concepts. Instead of approaching economics or econometrics from theory, he approaches them from real world data and by addressing pressing problems such as social mobility, racial disparities or the challenges of education policies. The class on racial disparities, for example, explains how there is a persistent gap in income between white and black individuals in the US because their mobility functions are different. It is as if they were on different treadmills. Their opportunities will not change just by trying to help those in the current generation. Policies must change the treadmill.
Another example of enjoying economic superstars these days was watching the debate between Acemoglu and Tirole about the economics of coronavirus chaired by Besley at the Royal Economic Society. Acemoglu tried to frame the policy failures of governments in front of the coronavirus crisis in terms of concepts from his last book with Robinson, "The Narrow Corridor". There is little doubt that state capacity is crucial to address emergencies like the present one. Jean Triole was quite impressive talking almost desperately about the need for more cooperation, stronger international institutions, and social norms that promote a long run perspective in health policy, climate change or the fight against inequalities. Institutions and social norms are related: a role for stronger independent institutions is to diffuse information and norms that promote this long run perspective. He explained very well the need to separate the fact that in this crisis there is little risk of moral hazard (as the crisis results from an exogenous event), from the fact that there should be no open bar. Public money still has an opportunity cost, and therefore public interventions and expenditures should be carefully targeted.
Like in soccer, economic superstars are not alone. In soccer, they need team mates and rivals so that we have games and tournaments. In economics, other more modest professionals have the obligation at least to promote these good ideas, build on them, and teach and discuss them with our students (on line or, whenever possible, face to face).