The optimality of age-based lockdown policies

Raffaele Giammetti (), Luca Papi, Désirée Teobaldelli and Davide Ticchi ()

Journal of Policy Modeling, 2022, vol. 44, issue 3, 722-738

Abstract: This paper studies an age-based lockdown that keeps over-60 workers at home as policy response to COVID-19 pandemic in a sample of thirty countries of the European single market. Three main policy issues are addressed, and the results can be summarized as follows. First, age-based lockdown policies are associated with limited output losses and, therefore, are an efficient strategy to limit the spread of the virus in a pandemic, especially in presence of strong age-dependent fatality rates. Second, lockdown policies generate substantial spillover effects; hence, international policy coordination avoiding that too many countries are in lockdown contemporaneously or that such coordination takes place across the countries with the highest integration of over-60 workers along GVCs may be helpful in reducing disruptions. Third, non-targeted lockdowns are much more costly than age-based ones; therefore, other things equal, age-based policies should always be preferred to non-targeted ones. Our analysis also suggests that, in our sample, the over-60 workers are relatively more numerous in sectors where the value added and the integration in GVCs is lower; this feature should be kept in mind in the design of other policies as it might play an important role.

Keywords: Global value chains; Age-dependent policies; Over-60 workers; Production networks; Input-output (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D57 F16 F62 F66 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jpolmo:v:44:y:2022:i:3:p:722-738

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpolmod.2022.05.001

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