A Simple Planning Problem for COVID-19 Lockdown

Francesco Lippi, Fernando Alvarez and David Argente

No 14658, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We study the optimal lockdown policy for a planner who controls the fatalities of a pandemic while minimizing the output costs of the lockdown. The policy depends on the fraction of infected and susceptible in the population, prescribing a severe lockdown beginning two weeks after the outbreak, covering 60% of the population after a month, and gradually withdrawing to 20% of the population after 3 months. The intensity of the optimal lockdown depends on the gradient of the fatality rate with respect to the infected, and the availability of antibody testing that yields a welfare gain of 2% of GDP.

Keywords: Lockdown; Quarantine; Epidemic control; Dynamic programming (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C61 I10 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (483)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP14658 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Working Paper: A Simple Planning Problem for COVID-19 Lockdown (2020)
Working Paper: A Simple Planning Problem forCOVID-19 Lockdown (2020)
Working Paper: A Simple Planning Problem for COVID-19 Lockdown (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:cpr:ceprdp:14658

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP14658

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().