Optimal Lockdown and Social Welfare

Pierre Pestieau and Gregory Ponthiere

No 2020032, LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE from Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE)

Abstract: This paper reexamines the design of the optimal lockdown strategy by paying attention to its robustness to the postulated social welfare cri- terion. We first characterize optimal lockdown under utilitarianism, and we show that this social criterion can, under some conditions, imply a COVID-19 variant of Parfit's (1984) Repugnant Conclusion: for any non- maximal lockdown saving lives at the cost of reducing average utility at a given period, there exists always a stricter lockdown, which further reduces average utility, but leads to a larger aggregate welfare. The optimal lock- down under utilitarianism is also shown to deteriorate the situation of the worst-off, against Hammond Equity. In order to do justice to Hammond Equity, we characterize optimal lockdown under the ex post egalitarian criterion, which gives absolute priority to the worst-off ex post. Under general conditions, the ex post egalitarian optimum involves a zero lock- down. Varying between zero and its maximal level, the optimal lockdown policy is not robust to the postulated ethical criterion.

Keywords: Covid-19; lockdown; optimal policy; social welfare (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 I31 J18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-10-22
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Optimal lockdown and social welfare (2022)
Working Paper: Optimal lockdown and social welfare (2021)
Working Paper: Optimal Lockdown and Social Welfare (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cor:louvco:2020032

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