Addressing the COVID-19 Pandemic: Comparing Alternative Value Frameworks

David Bloom, Maddalena Ferranna and Jp Sevilla

No 15904, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has forced countries to make difficult ethical choices, e.g., how to balance public health and socioeconomic activity and whom to prioritize in allocating vaccines or other scarce medical resources. We discuss the implications of benefit-cost analysis, utilitarianism, and prioritarianism in evaluating COVID-19-related policies. The relative regressivity of COVID-19 burdens and control policy costs determines whether increased sensitivity to distribution supports more or less aggressive control policies. Utilitarianism and prioritarianism, in that order, increasingly favor income redistribution mechanisms compared with benefit-cost analysis. The concern for the worse-off implies that prioritarianism is more likely than utilitarianism or benefit-cost analysis to target young and socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals in the allocation of scarce vaccine doses.

Keywords: Prioritarianism; Benefit-cost analysis; Utilitarianism; Covid-19; Vaccine allocation; Lockdown; Control policies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D6 I1 I3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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