| 来源类型 | Working Paper |
| 规范类型 | 报告 |
| DOI | 10.3386/w27009 |
| 来源ID | Working Paper 27009 |
| Covid-19 Infection Externalities: Trading Off Lives vs. Livelihoods | |
| Zachary A. Bethune; Anton Korinek | |
| 发表日期 | 2020-04-20 |
| 出版年 | 2020 |
| 语种 | 英语 |
| 摘要 | We analyze the externalities that arise when social and economic interactions transmit infectious diseases such as COVID-19. Individually rational agents do not internalize that they impose infection externalities upon others when the disease is transmitted. In an SIR model calibrated to capture the main features of COVID-19 in the US economy, we show that private agents perceive the cost an additional infection to be around $80k whereas the social cost including infection externalities is more than three times higher, around $286k. This misvaluation has stark implications for how society ultimately overcomes the disease: for a population of individually rational agents, the precautionary behavior by the susceptible flattens the curve of infections, but the disease is not overcome until herd immunity is acquired. The resulting economic cost is high; an initial sharp decline in aggregate output followed by a slow recovery over several years. By contrast, the socially optimal approach in our model focuses public policy measures on the infected in order to contain the disease and quickly eradicate it, which produces a much milder recession. If targeting the infected is impossible, the optimal policy in our model is still to aggressively contain and eliminate the disease, and the social cost of an extra infection rises to $586k. |
| 主题 | Macroeconomics ; Macroeconomic Models ; Fiscal Policy ; Public Economics ; Taxation ; Health, Education, and Welfare ; Health ; COVID-19 |
| URL | https://www.nber.org/papers/w27009 |
| 来源智库 | National Bureau of Economic Research (United States) |
| 引用统计 | |
| 资源类型 | 智库出版物 |
| 条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/584681 |
| 推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714 | Zachary A. Bethune,Anton Korinek. Covid-19 Infection Externalities: Trading Off Lives vs. Livelihoods. 2020. |
| 条目包含的文件 | ||||||
| 文件名称/大小 | 资源类型 | 版本类型 | 开放类型 | 使用许可 | ||
| w27009.pdf（804KB） | 智库出版物 | 限制开放 | CC BY-NC-SA | 浏览 | ||
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