IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/yor/yorken/20-05.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Epidemic policy under uncertainty and information

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Forster
  • Emanuela Randon

Abstract

We present a model of infectious disease control which incorporates uncertainty and information. A policy-maker possesses beliefs about the value of a key parameter - we choose the level of herd immunity in the population - and seeks the welfare-maximising level of intervention, accounting for both the public health benefit and economic cost. An approximation to the optimal rule shows that it accounts for interactions between beliefs, the policy-maker's attitude to risk, the production technology and costs, and the weights in the welfare function. We consider the role of information, in the form of expert opinion and scientific advice, in influencing the policy-maker's beliefs and the optimal policy. We assess the framework's potential for advancing the economic modelling of epidemic control.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Forster & Emanuela Randon, 2020. "Epidemic policy under uncertainty and information," Discussion Papers 20/05, Department of Economics, University of York.
    • Handle: RePEc:yor:yorken:20/05
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.york.ac.uk/media/economics/documents/discussionpapers/2020/2005.pdf
    File Function: Main text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hiroyasu Inoue & Yasuyuki Todo, 2020. "The propagation of economic impacts through supply chains: The case of a mega-city lockdown to prevent the spread of COVID-19," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(9), pages 1-10, September.
    2. Drummond, Michael F. & Sculpher, Mark J. & Torrance, George W. & O'Brien, Bernie J. & Stoddart, Greg L., 2005. "Methods for the Economic Evaluation of Health Care Programmes," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, edition 3, number 9780198529453.
    3. Christian Moser & Pierre Yared, 2022. "Pandemic Lockdown: The Role of Government Commitment," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 46, pages 27-50, October.
    4. Julian Kozlowski & Laura Veldkamp & Venky Venkateswaran, 2020. "Scarring Body and Mind: The Long-Term Belief-Scarring Effects of COVID-19," NBER Working Papers 27439, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Gonzalez-Eiras, Martin & Niepelt, Dirk, 2020. "On the Optimal "Lockdown" During an Epidemic," CEPR Discussion Papers 14612, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Andrew Atkeson, 2020. "How Deadly is COVID-19? Understanding the Difficulties with Estimation of its Fatality Rate," Staff Report 598, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    7. Jeremy E. Oakley & Anthony O'Hagan, 2007. "Uncertainty in prior elicitations: a nonparametric approach," Biometrika, Biometrika Trust, vol. 94(2), pages 427-441.
    8. Avinash K. Dixit & Robert S. Pindyck, 1994. "Investment under Uncertainty," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 5474.
    9. Farboodi, Maryam & Jarosch, Gregor & Shimer, Robert, 2021. "Internal and external effects of social distancing in a pandemic," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    10. Christopher Avery & William Bossert & Adam Clark & Glenn Ellison & Sara Fisher Ellison, 2020. "Policy Implications of Models of the Spread of Coronavirus: Perspectives and Opportunities for Economists," NBER Working Papers 27007, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Christopher Avery & William Bossert & Adam Thomas Clark & Glenn Ellison & Sara Ellison, 2020. "Policy Implications of Models of the Spread of Coronavirus: Perspectives and Opportunities for Economists," CESifo Working Paper Series 8293, CESifo.
    12. Christoph M. Rheinberger & Nicolas Treich, 2017. "Attitudes Toward Catastrophe," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 67(3), pages 609-636, July.
    13. Christian Moser & Pierre Yared, 2022. "Pandemic Lockdown: The Role of Government Commitment," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 46, pages 27-50, October.
    14. Sydney C. Ludvigson & Sai Ma & Serena Ng, 2020. "COVID-19 and The Macroeconomic Effects of Costly Disasters," NBER Working Papers 26987, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. L. Eeckhoudt & C. Gollier & H. Schlesinger, 2005. "Economic and financial decisions under risk," Post-Print hal-00325882, HAL.
    16. Hiroyasu Inoue & Yasuyuki Todo, 2020. "The propagation of the economic impact through supply chains: The case of a mega-city lockdown against the spread of COVID-19," Papers 2003.14002, arXiv.org.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. David Baqaee & Emmanuel Farhi & Michael J. Mina & James H. Stock, 2020. "Reopening Scenarios," NBER Working Papers 27244, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Vandenbroucke Guillaume, 2022. "The Mechanics of Individually- and Socially-Optimal Decisions during an Epidemic," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 22(1), pages 131-158, January.
    3. Daron Acemoglu & Victor Chernozhukov & Iván Werning & Michael D. Whinston, 2021. "Optimal Targeted Lockdowns in a Multigroup SIR Model," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 3(4), pages 487-502, December.
    4. Garriga, Carlos & Manuelli, Rody & Sanghi, Siddhartha, 2022. "Optimal management of an epidemic: Lockdown, vaccine and value of life," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    5. V. V. Chari & Rishabh Kirpalani & Christopher Phelan, 2021. "The Hammer and the Scalpel: On the Economics of Indiscriminate versus Targeted Isolation Policies during Pandemics," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 42, pages 1-14, October.
    6. Shin-ichi Fukuda, 2022. "Self-fulfilling Lockdowns in a Simple SIR-Macro Model," CIRJE F-Series CIRJE-F-1183, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
    7. Fernández-Villaverde, Jesús & Jones, Charles I., 2022. "Estimating and simulating a SIRD Model of COVID-19 for many countries, states, and cities," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    8. Martin F. Quaas & Jasper N. Meya & Hanna Schenk & Björn Bos & Moritz A. Drupp & Till Requate, 2020. "The Social Cost of Contacts: Theory and Evidence for the Covid-19 Pandemic in Germany," CESifo Working Paper Series 8347, CESifo.
    9. Greg Kaplan & Benjamin Moll & Giovanni L. Violante, 2020. "The Great Lockdown and the Big Stimulus: Tracing the Pandemic Possibility Frontier for the U.S," NBER Working Papers 27794, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. de Mello-Sampayo, F.;, 2024. "Uncertainty in Healthcare Policy Decisions: An Epidemiological Real Options Approach to COVID-19 Lockdown Exits," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 24/01, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    11. Daron Acemoglu & Victor Chernozhukov & Ivàn Werning & Michael D. Whinston, 2020. "A Multi-Risk SIR Model with Optimally Targeted Lockdown," CeMMAP working papers CWP14/20, Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    12. Álvaro H. Chaves Castro, 2021. "Análisis sobre la evolución del COVID-19 en Colombia: ¿se alcanzará el pico de contagio?," Tiempo y Economía, Universidad de Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano, vol. 8(1), pages 123-160, January.
    13. Aleksey Ponomarenko & Svetlana Popova & Andrey Sinyakov & Natalia Turdyeva & Dmitry Chernyadyev, 2020. "Assessing the Consequences of the Pandemic for the Russian Economy Through an Input-Output Model," Russian Journal of Money and Finance, Bank of Russia, vol. 79(4), pages 3-17, December.
    14. Abel Brodeur & David Gray & Anik Islam & Suraiya Bhuiyan, 2021. "A literature review of the economics of COVID‐19," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(4), pages 1007-1044, September.
    15. Jesper Akesson & Sam Ashworth-Hayes & Robert Hahn & Robert Metcalfe & Itzhak Rasooly, 2022. "Fatalism, beliefs, and behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 64(2), pages 147-190, April.
    16. Korolev, Ivan, 2021. "Identification and estimation of the SEIRD epidemic model for COVID-19," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 220(1), pages 63-85.
    17. Facundo Piguillem & Liyan Shi, 2022. "Optimal Covid-19 Quarantine and Testing Policies," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 132(647), pages 2534-2562.
    18. Giorgio Fabbri & Salvatore Federico & Davide Fiaschi & Fausto Gozzi, 2024. "Mobility decisions, economic dynamics and epidemic," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 77(1), pages 495-531, February.
    19. Glenn Ellison, 2020. "Implications of Heterogeneous SIR Models for Analyses of COVID-19," NBER Working Papers 27373, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Miguel Casares & Paul Gomme & Hashmat Khan, 2022. "COVID‐19 pandemic and economic scenarios for Ontario," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 55(S1), pages 503-539, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Economics; Epidemics; COVID-19;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • H12 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Crisis Management
    • H51 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Health

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:yor:yorken:20/05. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Paul Hodgson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deyoruk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.