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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...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2021
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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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7978372 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
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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