What can social scientists do about corona?  Create prizes for valuable contributions.  Here’s what Tyler Cowen and Mercatus are spearheading.

1. Best investigative journalism on coronavirus — 50k

2. Best blog or social media tracking/analysis of the virus — 100k

3. Best (justified) coronavirus policy writing — 50k

4. Best effort to find a good treatment rapidly — 500k, second prize 200k

5. Best innovation in social distancing — 100k

6. Most important innovation or improvement for India — 100k

What might be an example of a winning project?  What if this attempt to build scalable respirators succeeded?  That would be a natural winner.  Or a social distancing innovation might be the roll out of more meals on wheels, little libraries, online worship, easier ways to work from home, and so on.  The vision is to give to people whose work actually will be encouraged, not to give to Amazon (sorry Jeff!), no matter how many wonderful things they do.

These are not prizes you apply for, they will be awarded by Emergent Ventures when a significant success is spotted.

Now go win!