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Who should get vaccinated? Individualized allocation of vaccines over SIR network

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  • Kitagawa, Toru
  • Wang, Guanyi

Abstract

How to allocate vaccines over heterogeneous individuals is one of the important policy decisions in pandemic times. This paper develops a procedure to estimate an individualized vaccine allocation policy under limited supply, exploiting social network data containing individual demographic characteristics and health status. We model the spillover effects of vaccination based on a Heterogeneous-Interacted-SIR network model and estimate an individualized vaccine allocation policy by maximizing an estimated social welfare (public health) criterion incorporating these spillovers. While this optimization problem is generally an NP-hard integer optimization problem, we show that the SIR structure leads to a submodular objective function, and provide a computationally attractive greedy algorithm for approximating a solution that has a theoretical performance guarantee. Moreover, we characterize a finite sample welfare regret bound and examine how its uniform convergence rate depends on the complexity and riskiness of the social network. In the simulation, we illustrate the importance of considering spillovers by comparing our method with targeting without network information.

Suggested Citation

  • Kitagawa, Toru & Wang, Guanyi, 2023. "Who should get vaccinated? Individualized allocation of vaccines over SIR network," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 232(1), pages 109-131.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:econom:v:232:y:2023:i:1:p:109-131
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jeconom.2021.09.009
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    2. Yi Zhang & Kosuke Imai, 2023. "Individualized Policy Evaluation and Learning under Clustered Network Interference," Papers 2311.02467, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2024.
    3. Achim Ahrens & Alessandra Stampi‐Bombelli & Selina Kurer & Dominik Hangartner, 2024. "Optimal multi‐action treatment allocation: A two‐phase field experiment to boost immigrant naturalization," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(7), pages 1379-1395, November.
    4. Yuehao Bai & Azeem M. Shaikh & Max Tabord-Meehan, 2024. "A Primer on the Analysis of Randomized Experiments and a Survey of some Recent Advances," Papers 2405.03910, arXiv.org.
    5. Ryo Okui, 2024. "The 2023 Japanese Economic Association Nakahara Prize: Recipient—Prof. Toru Kitagawa, Brown University and University College London," The Japanese Economic Review, Springer, vol. 75(3), pages 405-406, July.
    6. Toru Kitagawa & Guanyi Wang, 2023. "Individualized Treatment Allocation in Sequential Network Games," Papers 2302.05747, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2024.
    7. Nguyen, Manh-Hung & Hoang, Viet-Ngu & Nghiem, Son & Nguyen, Lan Anh, 2024. "The Dynamic and Heterogeneous Effects of COVID-19 Vaccination Mandates in the USA," TSE Working Papers 24-1598, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Vaccine allocation; Statistical treatment choice; Submodularity; SIR model; Social network;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C31 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models; Quantile Regressions; Social Interaction Models
    • C54 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Quantitative Policy Modeling
    • C61 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Optimization Techniques; Programming Models; Dynamic Analysis

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