Sub-National Allocation of COVID-19 Tests: An Efficiency Criterion with an Application to Italian Regions

Christelle Baunez (), Mickael Degoulet (), Stéphane Luchini and Patrick Pintus
Additional contact information
Christelle Baunez: INT, Aix-Marseille University, CNRS
Mickael Degoulet: INT, Aix-Marseille University, CNRS

No 2011, AMSE Working Papers from Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France

Abstract: Tests are crucial to know about the number of people who have fallen ill with COVID-19 and to understand in real-time whether the dynamics of the pandemic is accelerating or decelerating. But tests are a scarce resource in many countries. The key but still open question is thus how to allocate tests across sub-national levels. We provide a data-driven and operational criterion to allocate tests efficiently across regions or provinces, with the view to maximize detection of people who have been infected. We apply our criterion to Italian regions and compute the shares of tests that should go to each region, which are shown to differ significantly from the actual distribution.

Keywords: COVID-19; epidemic dynamics; acceleration of harm; deceleration of harm; real-time analysis; sub-national allocation of tests; efficiency criterion; Italy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2020-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.amse-aixmarseille.fr/sites/default/fil ... /wp_2020_-_nr_11.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Sub-National Allocation of COVID-19 Tests: An Efficiency Criterion with an Application to Italian Regions (2020)
Working Paper: Sub-National Allocation of COVID-19 Tests: An Efficiency Criterion with an Application to Italian Regions (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aim:wpaimx:2011

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in AMSE Working Papers from Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France AMU-AMSE - 5-9 Boulevard Maurice Bourdet, CS 50498 - 13205 Marseille Cedex 1. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Gregory Cornu ().