, Columnist
Black Death Makes Us Think About Interest Rates
The coronavirus could transform economic life for much longer than we expect.
The traumatizing experience of sudden decimation.
Photograph: Bettmann/Getty Images
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All upheavals leave their marks. Some fade away, some linger. Following the Black Death, the plague that’s believed to have killed 60% of Europe’s population in the second half of the 14th century, the realization that life is short, played a big role in shaping interest rates in late medieval Europe, stretching all the way to the Enlightenment.
Could we witness very long-term effects from the present contagion?