Mathematical Epidemiology and Welfare Economics

Mark Gersovitz ()
Additional contact information
Mark Gersovitz: The Johns Hopkins University, Department of Economics

A chapter in Modeling the Interplay Between Human Behavior and the Spread of Infectious Diseases, 2013, pp 185-202 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Economics provides theories of private behavior and government policy that can be integrated with mathematical epidemiology, as illustrated in a susceptible-infected-susceptible model of infection. Confronting infections, people decide on prevention and therapy with regard to consequences for themselves but not for others, the economic concept of an externality. Public policy can optimally offset the externality by subsidizing prevention and therapy at equal rates (or less practically, taxing infection). Absent such interventions, seemingly beneficial changes such as a decreased cost of infection can perversely lower welfare by worsening the externality, the economic concept of immiserization. Other issues discussed include uniqueness and stability of the optimal steady state and its response to parameter changes.

Keywords: Marginal Utility; Social Planner; Therapeutic Effort; Lower Welfare; Private Decision (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
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:spr:sprchp:978-1-4614-5474-8_12

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9781461454748

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4614-5474-8_12

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().