A rational-choice model of Covid-19 transmission with endogenous quarantining and two-sided prevention

Joydeep Bhattacharya, Shankha Chakraborty and Xiumei Yu

ISU General Staff Papers from Iowa State University, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper offers a parsimonious, rational-choice model to study the effect of pre-existing inequalities on the transmission of COVID-19. Agents decide whether to "go out" (or self-quarantine) and, if so, whether to wear protection such as masks. Three elements distinguish the model from existing work. First, non-symptomatic agents do not know if they are infected. Second, some of these agents unknowingly transmit infections. Third, we permit two-sided prevention via the use of non-pharmaceutical interventions: the probability of a person catching the virus from another depends on protection choices made by each. We find that a mean-preserving increase in pre-existing income inequality unambiguously increases the equilibrium proportion of unprotected, socializing agents and may increase or decrease the proportion who self-quarantine. Strikingly, while higher pre-COVID inequality may or may not raise the overall risk of infection, it increases the risk of disease in social interactions.

Date: 2021-03-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-isf
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://dr.lib.iastate.edu/server/api/core/bitstre ... 5b19855687ea/content
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
Journal Article: A rational-choice model of Covid-19 transmission with endogenous quarantining and two-sided prevention (2021)
Working Paper: A Rational-Choice Model of Covid-19 Transmission with Endogenous Quarantining and Two-sided Prevention (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:isu:genstf:202103010800001110

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ISU General Staff Papers from Iowa State University, Department of Economics Iowa State University, Dept. of Economics, 260 Heady Hall, Ames, IA 50011-1070. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Curtis Balmer ().