What is it about?
How to combat pandemics like COVID-19? This paper combines epidemiological models with economic models and suggests Pareto-improving policies that improve both health and economic objectives: Subsidies that incentivize individuals to stay at home, funded by a (Pigouvian) tax on consumption.
Featured Image
Photo by Maxime on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Unlike many papers that focus on the tradeoff between health and economic objectives, this paper suggests policies that can improve both.
Perspectives
When the world as we know it came to a screeching halt in March of 2020, I started working on this paper. It was a fascinating project as it forced me (an economist) to immerse myself in the epidemiological literature. Merging epidemiological models with economic models allowed me to study policies that can combat the virus but at the same time not cripple the economy. I hope that the lessons provided in this paper can be useful to policymakers in future pandemics.
Sewon Hur
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: THE DISTRIBUTIONAL EFFECTS OF COVID‐19 AND OPTIMAL MITIGATION POLICIES, International Economic Review, August 2022, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/iere.12601.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
