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The social cost of contacts: Theory and evidence for the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany

Building on the epidemiological SIR model, we present an economic model with heterogeneous individuals deriving utility from social contacts creating infection risks. Focusing on social distancing of individuals susceptible to an infection we theoretically characterize the gap between private and so...

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Autores principales: Quaas, Martin F., Meya, Jasper N., Schenk, Hanna, Bos, Björn, Drupp, Moritz A., Requate, Till
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7978372/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33740007
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248288
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author Quaas, Martin F.
Meya, Jasper N.
Schenk, Hanna
Bos, Björn
Drupp, Moritz A.
Requate, Till
author_facet Quaas, Martin F.
Meya, Jasper N.
Schenk, Hanna
Bos, Björn
Drupp, Moritz A.
Requate, Till
author_sort Quaas, Martin F.
collection PubMed
description Building on the epidemiological SIR model, we present an economic model with heterogeneous individuals deriving utility from social contacts creating infection risks. Focusing on social distancing of individuals susceptible to an infection we theoretically characterize the gap between private and social cost of contacts. Our main contribution is to quantify this gap by calibrating the model with unique survey data from Germany on social distancing and impure altruism from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The optimal policy is to drastically reduce contacts at the beginning to almost eradicate the epidemic and keep them at levels that contain the pandemic at a low prevalence level. We find that also in laissez faire, private protection efforts by forward-looking, risk averse individuals would have stabilized the epidemic, but at a much higher prevalence of infection than optimal. Altruistic motives increase individual protection efforts, but a substantial gap to the social optimum remains.
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spelling pubmed-79783722021-03-30 The social cost of contacts: Theory and evidence for the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany Quaas, Martin F. Meya, Jasper N. Schenk, Hanna Bos, Björn Drupp, Moritz A. Requate, Till PLoS One Research Article Building on the epidemiological SIR model, we present an economic model with heterogeneous individuals deriving utility from social contacts creating infection risks. Focusing on social distancing of individuals susceptible to an infection we theoretically characterize the gap between private and social cost of contacts. Our main contribution is to quantify this gap by calibrating the model with unique survey data from Germany on social distancing and impure altruism from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The optimal policy is to drastically reduce contacts at the beginning to almost eradicate the epidemic and keep them at levels that contain the pandemic at a low prevalence level. We find that also in laissez faire, private protection efforts by forward-looking, risk averse individuals would have stabilized the epidemic, but at a much higher prevalence of infection than optimal. Altruistic motives increase individual protection efforts, but a substantial gap to the social optimum remains. Public Library of Science 2021-03-19 /pmc/articles/PMC7978372/ /pubmed/33740007 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248288 Text en © 2021 Quaas et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Quaas, Martin F.
Meya, Jasper N.
Schenk, Hanna
Bos, Björn
Drupp, Moritz A.
Requate, Till
The social cost of contacts: Theory and evidence for the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany
title The social cost of contacts: Theory and evidence for the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany
title_full The social cost of contacts: Theory and evidence for the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany
title_fullStr The social cost of contacts: Theory and evidence for the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany
title_full_unstemmed The social cost of contacts: Theory and evidence for the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany
title_short The social cost of contacts: Theory and evidence for the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany
title_sort social cost of contacts: theory and evidence for the first wave of the covid-19 pandemic in germany
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7978372/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33740007
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248288
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