Economic, social and political issues raised by the COVID-19 pandemic

Clement Tisdell

Economic Analysis and Policy, 2020, vol. 68, issue C, 17-28

Abstract: This article contributes to the assessment of public policies to control the incidence of COVID-19 in several ways. (1) It contains a brief historical and comparative overview of selected pandemics, particularly in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic; (2) It provides a simple original model which could be used to prioritize the admission of COVID-19 sufferers to hospital (taking into account available hospital capacity) and (3) it specifies a second model to evaluate desired social choices involving the trade-off between the severity of social restrictions (taking into account their impact on the incidence of COVID-19) and the level of economic activity. Bergson-type welfare functions are utilized in the second model. It also critically examines the proposition that the isolation (lockdown) of social groups is a desirable method of limiting the incidence of COVID-19. This leads onto the consideration of the extent to which personal freedom of choice (liberty) ought to be restricted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. A brief outline follows illustrating the factors that are likely to hinder economic recovery from COVID-19. Particular attention is paid to the moral and ethical questions raised by policies to control COVID-19. These appear to have received little attention in the relevant economic literature.

Keywords: Economic activity and COVID-19; History of pandemics; Liberty and COVID-19; Quality of life years (QALYS) and COVID-19; Social choice and COVID-19; Triage and COVID-19; Value of human life and COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E4 F01 I Q00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (54)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0313592620304082
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:ecanpo:v:68:y:2020:i:c:p:17-28

DOI: 10.1016/j.eap.2020.08.002

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Analysis and Policy is currently edited by Clevo Wilson

More articles in Economic Analysis and Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().